LYNN — One long journey has ended and another is beginning for the Rev. Victor Luna Vitug, who celebrated his first Mass last Sunday at St. Joseph’s Church.
Fr. Vitug and 12 other men were ordained to the priesthood by Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley last Saturday in the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston.
Fr. Vitug, 67, spent the last year as a deacon at the Union Street church, ministering to parishioners and assisting the Rev. Israel Rodriguez, St. Joseph’s administrator.
“To be in this community was, to me, to be in a new family,” Fr. Vitug said.
A native of the Philippines and the fifth of nine children, Fr. Vitug (pronounced “veetoog”) grew up in a family of successful merchants and attended parochial schools. As a businessman he lived a life outfitted, he said, with outward trappings of success and wealth. But Fr. Vitug said his inner life was empty.
“I seemed to have it all but something was empty. I was born and raised a Catholic, but I was not living it. When life became difficult, I didn’t have an answer. I was broken,” he said.
Fr. Vitug began a journey of faith that took him to Italy and into religious training.
“I rediscovered my vocation when I was turning 40. I was led back to the church,” he said.
By 2009, he was a seminarian assigned to the Pacific island of Guam. In 2016, his studies brought him to Boston where he studied in St. John’s Seminary in the Archdiocese of Boston. His faith formation work brought Fr. Vitug a year ago to St. Joseph’s where he was impressed by the church’s immigrant history spanning the arrival of Irish immigrants to the United States to an influx of Guatemalan and Mexican immigrants.
His celebration Sunday of his first Mass included family members and Lynn friends. His first assignment as a priest is to the St. Agnes/St. Athanasius Collaborative in Reading in early June.
“God has his way of performing miracles. He is not finished with me. I think I am being prepared to help people who have the same history as mine,” he said.
St. Joseph’s will see a change in pastors in June: Fr. Rodriguez said he will be assigned to St. Mary of the Assumption in Lawrence and the Rev. Andrea Filippucci will come to St. Joseph’s.
Ordained in 2015, Fr. Filippucci is an Italian native whose initial assignment was to St. Patrick’s in Lawrence. St. Joseph’s will host a farewell party on Sunday for Fr. Rodriguez.
