New Catholic priest born in Peru
LONG ROAD TO NR — The area’s newest Catholic priest, Raul Silva, was born in Lima, Peru and graduated from Seton Hall University. (Submitted photo)
By KATHY PAULSEN
Staff Writer
Peru is a mountainous country in Central South America, bordering Ecuador and Colombia to the north, on the east with Brazil and Bolivia, on the south with Chile and on the west with the Pacific Ocean. Lima, the capitol of Peru, was founded in 1535 and is the largest city in the country with nearly nine million people.
It’s a long way from New Richland, both in miles and culture, but there now exists a connection between here and there.
Lima is where our area’s new Catholic priest, Father Raul Silva, was born 38 years ago.
Father Silva, the son of Jose and Otilia Silva, is the sixth of three brothers and four sisters. At a very young age he recalls being struck by the humility and startling lives of the saints, especially St. Martin de Porres and St. Rose of Lima. They were two great saints who lived only half an hour away from his house in Lima. St. Rose was the first canonized saint on the continent of America.“I think that was the beginning of my vocation to the priesthood,” said Silva. “But it took me many years to be able to say yes to that calling.”
Because of economic reasons and his mother being sick with cancer, the Silva family immigrated to the United States.
“I had finished high school when I came to the United States,” he said. “I was 18 years old. Today, most of my brothers and sisters are married and I have 15 nephews and nieces; they all live in New Jersey.”
Father Silva said it would be very difficult to write down all the stories he can share, especially the miracles he has witnessed.
“For instance, the fact that I am a missionary priest and presently serving in Minnesota is already a big miracle,” he said.
Father Silva said his family members were not really practicing Catholics. They would only go to church on special occasions like Easter or Christmas. He recounts that it was thanks to a new reality in the Catholic Church that helped him and his family rediscover their Catholic faith. This reality is called the Neocatechumenal Way, which is an itinerary of Christian formation to help those baptized and also non-baptized to discover the love of God and what it means to be a Christian.
“For me, this experience with this reality in the Catholic Church was a turning point in my life,” he said. “As I mentioned earlier, I had sensed the Lord was calling me to be a priest at a young age, but I was unable to respond to that calling.”
He sees two main reasons why he was unable to respond.
“One was that I was immersed in an environment where my friends and even some members of my family would laugh at the idea of being a priest,” he said. “And second, because of my infantile faith. It was through this new reality in the Catholic Church that my family returned to the church and that I managed to respond to the call of the Lord. One of my sisters also found her vocation and she is a Carmelite cloister nun in New Jersey today.”
Father Silva asks for prayers for his sister, who will deliver her final vows December 12.
It was in 1995 that Silva learned where he was headed, when he attended World Youth Day in Loreto, Italy.
“It was that meeting with Pope John Paul II and the young people of the world that gave me the grace to enter the seminary,” he said. “After one year of discernment, I decided to enter the Redemptoris Mater Missionary Seminary.”
This is a particular seminary where you don’t get to choose which of the 102 seminaries around the world you join. There are eight of those seminaries in the U.S.
“I remember very clearly the day when I packed my luggage, said good bye to my family and took the plane to Italy,” said Father Silva.
“I had no idea where the Lord would lead me next, but one thing I know is that God gave me the grace to abandon all my dreams and plans and leave it all up to Him.”
To his surprise, he was sent to the seminary of the archdiocese of Newark in New Jersey.
“Of course my family and I were very happy that I did not end up so far away — at least not for now,” he said.
Father Silva explained it took him almost 11 years to complete his formation to the priesthood.
“As part of our formation and while we are still seminarians, we spend around three years in mission accompanying a priest or a team of missionary catechists anywhere around the world,” he said. “I was sent to work in a mission we have very close to Haiti. That was my first encounter with great poverty, material and moral. This was an important experience in my formation because when I returned to the seminary, I would appreciate more my studies and my formation to be a missionary priest.”
Ordained a priest in 2006 along with 19 other men, his ordination class was the largest ordination class in the nation that year. After serving for one year as a deacon in the Sacred Heart Cathedral of Newark, he was appointed parochial vicar in a parish in the north of the diocese of New Jersey. He worked in that parish for six years until the Bishop of Newark asked Father Silva to come to work in the diocese of Winona, at the request of Bishop John Quinn. Father Silva arrived in Minnesota in June last year. Bishop Quinn asked Father Silva to be Father Dale Tupper’s assistant at Queen of Angels in Austin. Three months ago, Bishop Quinn appointed Father Silva pastor of our three local Catholic churches.
When asked about how long Father Silva plans to stay in Minnesota, he responded, “Being a missionary priest I don’t really make the plans, but leave it up to the Bishop. I have seen that many of our guys stay for many years and others change assignment faster; it really depends on the needs of the church here and abroad.”
Father Silva is an American citizen who speaks Spanish, English and Italian. He also understands a little Creole, the language of the Haitian people. He has completed a bachelor’s degree in Education and a master in Systematic Theology from Seton Hall University in Newark. He enjoys reading the history of the Catholic Church and about the lives of the saints. One of the few things he misses is playing sports. As a teenager he used to play baseball almost at a professional level with a Japanese team in his home country. He played soccer with his friends in his free time.
Father Silva celebrates Mass at St. Aidan in Ellendale on Saturday evening at 5 p.m. and on Sunday morning at 8:30 at All Saints in New Richland. He travels to St. Mary’s Church east of Geneva where he celebrates the 10:30 a.m. Sunday Mass. He also celebrates mass at the Care Center in New Richland every Friday at 9 a.m. It is also part of his assignment to help at Queen of Angels with the work of the Neocatechumenal Way and the Hispanic ministry, very much active in that parish. He says he is lucky that he is not alone in that work since he is accompanied by Father Wellington Munoz, also a priest from Newark and who arrived at the diocese three months ago.
When asked about his preparation and delivery of his homilies, Father Silva said he likes to do his homilies spontaneously. He also said he likes to meditate and pray with the scriptures for about two hours when he prepares his homily. He says it is also an essential part of the preparation to read the commentaries of the Fathers of the Church because they give him a unique insight and a great guidance into the scriptures.
Father Silva says he is happy to be working in the diocese of Winona. He says he finds the people to be kind and calm and not so much in a rush like in the big cities.
“Two things I don’t miss from the East Coast are the hectic life and the traffic,” he said.
Even though Father Silva does not like to fly, he has attended most of the World Youth Day events, which most generally are held every two or three years. He has attended these pilgrimages bringing around 60 to 100 young people to different parts of the world. Father Silva has attended the World Youth Day in Denver in 1993, Loreto, Italy in ‘95, France in ‘97, Israel and Rome in 2000, Canada in 2003, Cologne, Germany in 2005, Australia in 2008, Madrid in 2011 and Brazil this year, when he brought 28 young people from Minnesota.
“I am happy with the life the Lord is giving me,” he said. “I realized it is actually a great privilege and not a ‘right’ to be a priest in the Catholic Church, something I do not earn or deserve. It is marvelous to see how the Lord can really use you to transform the lives of people. It is a great responsibility and I ask you to please help me with your prayers so that I can do a real service to the church and remain faithful to Christ.”