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Dear Parishioners of Our Lady of Lourdes:
I look forward to joining your community as a senior associate pastor in July. “Senior,” by the way, refers only to age, not to status or capability. But, let me tell you a bit about myself.
My family of origin immigrated to southwest Minneapolis in 1955. We belonged to Visitation Parish (now defunct) and I graduated from the parish grade school. My mother had converted to the Catholic faith while a student at Marquette University and had a great devotion to the Jesuits. There being no Jesuit high school available in the Twin Cities, she sent me down the river to Campion Jesuit High School in Prairie du Chien WI (now defunct.) I then followed her and my dad’s footsteps to Marquette University, graduating in 1965.
After graduation from university, I immediately entered the Jesuit novitiate, then located in St. Bonifacius MN, and made my first vows in 1967. Following the somewhat lengthy course of Jesuit formation in Saint Louis MO, Omaha NE and London UK, I was ordained to the priesthood in 1975. Hence, I have been a Jesuit for 53 years and a priest for 43 years. Over those years I have been involved in a variety of ministries.
Following ordination, I served as a (junior) associate pastor for three years, then as physics teacher, campus ministry director and Vice President for Religious Affairs at Marquette University. In 1991, my provincial superior sent me to the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis to work on pastoral outreach to Catholic students on several non-Catholic colleges in the area. From 1994 – 1999, I served as the first Jesuit pastor of the then Church of Saint Luke (now Saint Thomas More) in Saint Paul.
I spent the next six years working in the internal administration of the Jesuits first at my local province and then at the national Jesuit Conference in Washington DC. While at the Jesuit Conference, I served on a working committee of the Conference of Major Superiors of Men (CMSM) to address the “sexual abuse crisis.” This committee established protocols for almost all of the religious orders of men in the USA to address prevention and remediation of abuse of children and vulnerable adults by members and associated institutions.
In 2005, I received my most daunting and rewarding assignment. This was to establish a new Jesuit high school in the Twin Cities exclusively serving low-income families and following the “Cristo Rey model.” Cristo Rey Jesuit High School – Twin Cities opened in 2007 with 90 freshmen and graduated its first class of about 60 in 2011. Today the school is bursting at the seams expecting to enroll over 500 students next August and expecting to graduate, a year from now, the largest class ever in the history of the 32 member national Cristo Rey Network of schools. In the interim, every student who stayed with the program graduated with a college acceptance letter in their pocket.
Following that first graduation in 2011, I turned over leadership of the school to a younger man and spent three more years in Jesuit personnel administration. When our two upper-Midwest provinces merged and my job ended, I asked to return to the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis to serve in parish ministry. With my provincial’s agreement, the archbishop first assigned me to Saint Olaf Parish in downtown and now, after three years, to Our Lady of Lourdes.
My hope is to provide you with preaching that will stretch your mind but not your patience. I love presiding at Mass and hope to do it every time with reverence, energy and good humor. As a Jesuit, I hope to share our gift of Ignatian spirituality which recognizes that the same Holy Spirit that guides the hierarchical Church also guides each of us as adult Christians. Another passion of mine is catechesis, sharing with neophytes the beauty and depth of our Catholic Christian faith.
Finally, I look forward to getting to know you and how the Spirit is working in you, individually and as a community of faith.
Fr. David