Bulletins

August 20, 2017

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Welcome, Father Janusz!

Janusz Mocarski was born in 1977 in Białystok, Poland and grew up in Knyszyn, a small town in northeastern Poland, the fourth of five children of Stanisław and Wanda. His father was the organist for his Catholic parish, so the Church was always part of his life. He became an altar server when he was seven. During high school he was active in the youth program, helping to organize prayer groups and foot pilgrimages to local Marian shrines.

“I grew up with devotion to the Blessed Mother,” he said. “Maybe I wasn’t conscious of it growing up. As a kid you don’t understand, but we prayed daily. Each evening we would kneel down together as a family. Part of that prayer would be a decade of the rosary. That was part of my family life which I now treasure very much and I now realize was one of the small factors that contributed to my vocation.”

It wasn’t until he was about 24, nearing the end of his studies at the Catholic University of Lublin (where Pope John Paul II taught for nearly 25 years) that he began seriously thinking of priesthood.

Two of his siblings live in Chicago and he had visited there a number of times. After his graduation in 2002, he returned to Chicago, working in construction and as a waiter. A friend introduced him to a priest from their hometown who was serving in America: Father Andrejz Zglejszewski, director of worship for the Rockville Centre Diocese. Janusz began to correspond with Father Zglejszewski and Father Thomas Coogan, then vocations director for Rockville Centre. In 2009 he was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Rockville Centre. Since then he has served as Associate Pastor of Our Lady of the Assumption in Copiague, NY and Associate Pastor of St. Mary’s in East Islip, NY. Father even serves on the Advisory Board of the theological and pastoral journal Seat of Wisdom, which is published by the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Huntington, NY.

He now comes to Virginia for full-time graduate studies at Divine Mercy University, which is home to the Institute for Psychological Sciences. Father, we hope St. John the Beloved will become your home.

God bless you.

Fr. Christopher J. Pollard

p.s. You can read more from the article about Father Janusz in the Long Island Catholic by following this link: bit.ly/FrJanuszMissionarySpirit