Priest Profile

Call it the case of the old parish and the young priest.

Our Lady of Mercy Church in the Fordham section of the Bronx celebrated its 150th anniversary in June with appropriate fanfare and a Mass celebrated by Cardinal Edward Egan of New York.

Heading up the celebration was 34-year-old Father Ambiorix Rodriguez, the newly appointed parish administrator. Ordained six years ago, Father Rodriguez was chosen to run Our Lady of Mercy as only his second archdiocesan assignment after the elderly pastor fell ill.

“It was a big surprise,” he says about his appointment. “But I took the challenge. I have always felt sure and good about being a priest, with the grace of God.”

At the anniversary Mass, Cardinal Egan praised Father Rodriguez for taking on a tough assignment and told parishioners that they were blessed to have a young and dedicated priest.

Father Rodriguez was chosen for the position because of his leadership qualities and pastoral zeal, says Bishop Josu Iriondo, archdiocesan vicar for Hispanic Affairs and pastor of a nearby Bronx parish.

Since his days as a semin — arian, Father Rodriguez has led a summer mission to the Dominican Republic, his home country, to evangelize and bring charitable aid to people in poor rural areas, Bishop Iriondo points out. “He is a good, young priest,” adds the bishop, “with a heart for the people and the Church.”

When Father Rodriguez arrived last October at Our Lady of Mercy, a parish that borders the South Bronx, he found the good, the inadequate and the ugly. The ugly was the huge, three-story rectory, built for another era when five or six priests staffed the parish. The roof was leaking, many rooms had not been used for years, and there had been a number of recent burglaries.

The church, built in 1907, was also showing its age.

The good was the people, a diverse mix from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds, who welcomed the new administrator with open arms and offered their prayers and labor.

Father Rodriguez had spent the first five years after ordination as an assistant at Our Lady Queen of Martyrs in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, where most of the people are from his home country. Now he was head of a parish that encompassed the Jesuit-run Fordham University and included Spanish speakers from many countries as well as Filipinos, African-Americans and those of Irish and Italian descent whose ancestors had built the parish 150 years ago.

The parish elementary school was running well but had a precariously low enrollment of 195.

Surveying his new situation, Father Rodriguez remembered the words of the ordination ceremony: “We rely on the help of the Lord.” He began to pray more fervently than ever and got to work.

“I didn't have administrative experience,” he says. “But I knew that this was God's will for me. He would lead me.”

Father Rodriguez had the rec-tory roof replaced, put gates around the building to prevent break-ins, cleared a suite of empty rooms for his office, revived the parish bulletin in English and Spanish, began making plans for the sesquicentennial celebration and got to know the people. Attendance at the five weekend Masses is 1,100, with the largest crowd at the one Spanish-language Mass.

On a Mission

Last July, Father Rodriguez again led a two-week mission to the Dominican Republic with 34 lay people. “We go to the very poor areas to bring the Gospel and to bring hope,” he said. “We bring clothing, food, medical care. We stay in convents or on parish grounds.”

In areas where priests rarely visit, he baptizes babies, performs marriage ceremonies, hears confessions, celebrates Mass and gives first holy Communion to children. “This is the simple work of a priest, in a place where it is so badly needed,” he says.

Of course, the work of a priest is needed everywhere.

“He is a good witness to the holiness of the priesthood,” parishioner Elsie Aponte says of the priest's work in the Bronx parish. “As a young priest, he is a good example to our young people. They see him always doing the work of the Lord, and maybe they will think about becoming priests themselves.”

Father Rodriguez was led to the priesthood through his involvement in a youth group at St. Elizabeth parish in upper Manhattan, where his family moved in the 1980s. On a retreat, he realized that “God wanted something else for me than to be married. Vocation is in the heart, and from that point I never had a doubt about becoming a priest. It was a call from God.”

He read about St. Francis of Assisi giving himself totally to God, and “from St. Francis I received the sense of living a simple life of celibacy and obedience. In my heart, God was preparing me for the promises of the priesthood.”

It is evident he also developed a great love for the Eucharist, the Blessed Mother and the Church. He has a great devotion to Pope John Paul II, whom he sees as a great witness to the faith and the priesthood.

“It is important for a priest always to be a witness, because it is difficult to be a Christian in today's world,” Father Rodriguez says. “Likewise, I experience the witness of lay persons when they talk to me about their faith. To see young married people living according to the Church always inspires me. Priests and lay people need to be witnesses to one another and support one another, because we share the same faith.”

Stephen Vincent writes from Wallingford, Connecticut.