Mission
Incredible: Four priests from the Archdiocese of Newark will celebrate "Father's Day" by accepting assignments to serve the Mission Churches of Estonia and Germany during a commission ceremony to begin at 7 p.m. Sunday, June 15, at St. Francis of Assisi in Ridgefield Park. Archbishop McCarrick will preside over the celebration, offering his prayers as he sends the four priests to their new "local" parishes. The service will be immediately followed by a reception in the parish gymnasium, to which all are invited. Father Christoph Lintz of St. Francis of Assisi in Ridgefield Park, will be assigned to the service of Cardinal Sterzinsky of the Archdiocese of Berlin, Germany. Father Jose de Jesus Montes de Oca, Father Miguel Rosenta Arata Rosenthal, and Father Alfonso Di Giovanni, will serve the universal Church in Estonia, a former member of the United Soviet Socialist Republic. They are expected to serve for three years. As former chair of the United States Bishops' Committee on Aid to the Church in Eastern Europe, Archbishop McCarrick had the opportunity to see first-hand the need of the Church in Estonia and other nations emerging from Communist rule. He recognized a pastoral need in those countries that had recently been freed from religious persecution. "The people thirst for the Word of God," he said. "We will try to quench that thirst." Determined to offer assistance, Archbishop McCarrick began the process of "fathering" mission churches and assigning priests from his own archdiocese to lead them, regardless of the personnel needs within the archdiocese itself. "In the last decade we have probably ordained more priests for Newark than any other United States diocese," Archbishop McCarrick confessed. "So if anyone is called to be generous, it should be us."
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