The new priests are Father Michael F. Falce, Pedro Angucho Lopez, JohnPaul Obiaeri and Edwin A. Ortiz. During the two-hour liturgy in front of a full church, the four men pledged obedience to the Bishop and his successors as they proclaimed that they were ready to serve the people of Brooklyn and Queens.
Last Saturday, Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio ordained four young men to the priesthood: Father Pedro Francisco Angucho López, 31; Father Michael Francis Falce, 26; Father JohnPaul Kodiri Columbus Obiaeri, 34; and Father Edwin Alexander Ortiz, 35. The ordination of new priests is always joyous news for the Church in general, and for the diocese where they are destined to serve in particular.
Father Pedro Francisco Angucho López, 31, said it was the grace of God and his mother’s prayers that finally got him to realize the importance of his vocation. Also, people, even total strangers, kept telling him that he was meant to be a priest.
Father Michael Francis Falce, who will turn 27 on the day he will offer his first Mass of thanksgiving, has had a pretty good idea about what he wanted to do with his life from an early age.
Obiaeri grew up in Nigeria in a region that is 70 percent Catholic. His whole family is Catholic. He extended that family to his parish where he spent most of his free time. He didn’t play that much soccer with the other kids; he was helping in the church and was part of various groups.
Father Edwin Alexander Ortiz, 35, has spent most of his life in service. He served at his parish and a cemetery in Queens, as a U.S. Marines medic in Japan and in the U.S. Navy in Washington, D.C.
Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio will ordain five men to the priesthood for the Diocese of Brooklyn at the Co-Cathedral of St. Joseph, Prospect Heights, on Saturday, June 30 at 11 a.m.
Father Alessandro Linardi, 35, began his worldly travels in childhood, but the Holy Land captured his heart so profoundly that he gave himself completely to the One Who called him there.
The five men becoming priests for the Diocese of Brooklyn June 30 were ordained transitional deacons during three separate Masses in Rome, Yonkers and Astoria.
Father Joseph Franklin Dutan, 30, believes that it was an extraordinary act of God, in the form of deadly cancer, that finally helped him answer his true calling.
