Priest Profile

A parish grows in southern California. But don't bother looking in the local yellow pages for the architect.

“The real building plan is not with bricks and mortar but with catechisms and Bibles, with Eucharistic holy hours and adult-formation classes,” says Father Joseph Illo, pastor of the parish, St. Joseph's in Modesto. “We are working much more closely with Pope John Paul II and his plans for the New Evangelization than we are with our architects and their plans for larger buildings. John Paul is the real architect of this parish, and we priests and lay staff are all the masons and carpenters.”

The parish's mission statement is: “To bring every Catholic within our parish boundaries to Mass to receive the holy Eucharist in the state of grace each week. In this way we hope to build a civilization of love.”

It's an ambitious mission. The parish has 4,300 families and expects to add 2,000 more to the rolls within five years. About 8,000 new homes are being built within the parish boundaries in that period.

Father Illo, who has headed the parish for the past four years, knows that “bricks and mortar” must be in place for the spiritual mission to succeed. St. Joseph's was founded in 1967 on the outskirts of Modesto, a city with a population of 203,000, when the area was orchards and open fields. “Now our parish is suburbia and quickly becoming urbanized,” the priest notes.

With a $6 million building fund, the parish bought two adjacent parcels of land recently for $2.5 million, one with an office building where the booming religious-education program will be relocated. In time, Father Illo prays, the parish will open an elementary school in the building, too.

The parish hall is being refurbished and expanded to increase its size by 33%. Plans for the church are nearing completion. An architect is doing a structural analysis of the present building and will submit a recommendation either to expand the church or tear it down and build a structure that is 50% larger. It's an exciting time of growth.

“Our parking [lot] is so crowded that people park in the lots of all the local businesses,” Father Illo says. “We've had to start a ‘parking apostolate’ with guys with radios, safety vests and cones directing traffic on Sundays.”

The parish's staff is also growing. Assisting Father Illo are two associate priests and a permanent deacon. The lay staff of full-time and part-time employees numbers 30. They administer a long list of parish apostolates for children, teens and adults. An innovative program called Landings provides a supportive environment for fallen-away Catholics returning to the faith. Teen programs include a Sunday evening Mass, catechetics, social activities and sports.

A perpetual adoration chapel, where the Blessed Sacrament is exposed ’round the clock, is the heart of all parish activity, Father Illo says.

“Father Illo has brought new life to the parish,” says Laura Harker, who has been in the parish for 12 years with her husband and their four children. “We've been on two World Youth Day trips with him, to Rome in 2000 and Toronto in 2002. One minute he's playing Frisbee with the high-school students, and the next moment he's offering Mass in the catacombs.”

Father Illo was born in the Bronx, N.Y., and grew up there and in New Jersey and rural Pennsylvania. He almost didn't make it to the priest-hood. Through high school and college, “I felt sure I was called to marriage and raising a large family,” he recalls.

After graduating from Penn State University, he worked for a year at Ignatius Press in San Francisco, where he met Jesuit Father Joseph Fessio, who said Father Illo had a vocation to the diocesan priesthood. Not sure, the future priest moved to England to get a master's degree at Oxford University. But before starting classes, he embarked on a 50-day pilgrimage that included Paris, Rome and Jerusalem.

“I heard a loud call and promised God to enter the seminary the next fall,” he says.

He spent time with a religious community before applying to the Diocese of Stockton, Calif., where he was ordained in 1991. He was the diocesan vocations director for three years before being appointed pastor of St. Joseph's in 2000.

Wilma Cabacungan joined the parish in 1970, when Mass was offered in an all-purpose building and parishioners sat on folding chairs. She says that, when Father Illo arrived, “he called us all into prayer, and he consecrated the parish to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.”

One of Father Illo's dreams is to have a parish school with nuns teaching. Until that time, he oversees a religious-education program with more than 900 students and 140 volunteer catechists.

Dino Durando, director of the program, calls Father Illo “a great mentor” who visits classes regularly and started a Eucharistic-adoration program for children. “His fidelity — not only to Church teaching but also to the heart of the New Evangelization — makes it possible to be joyful even in the toughest of times.”

Stephen Vincent is based in Wallingford, Connecticut.