The lifting of attendance limits on churches couldn’t have come at a better time for Raffaele Salvino.
Just days after B.C. health officials removed restrictions specific to places of worship, hundreds of Catholics gathered at Holy Rosary Cathedral to celebrate the young Vancouver man’s ordination to the priesthood.
On Saturday, July 3, Archbishop J. Michael Miller ordained Father Raffaele Salvino, calling the celebration doubly joyful.
“Joy, exuberant joy, marks this day of priestly ordination, a day when we are also experiencing the thrill of our cathedral once again filled with worshippers,” Archbishop Miller said at the ordination Mass.
“Today the whole of our local Church is suffused with gladness. Indeed, together with the Psalmist we rightly sing, ‘I was glad when they said to me: let us go to the House of the Lord.’”
An estimated 750 people attended, including dozens of priests. The ordination had been planned for a total of 50 people and limited to invited guests, but after restrictions were lifted July 1 the event was suddenly expanded to the wider community.
The Mass was also streamed live on YouTube, where it has since been viewed more than 2,700 times.
Father Salvino remarked that his ordination on the Feast of St. Thomas was not a coincidence.
“We call him ‘the doubter.’ Despite having walked and followed and lived close to Jesus for three years, he had a moment of doubt. Christ appeared to him in this moment of doubt so that he would believe, and he went on to a wonderful, fulfilling life as an apostle and preached the Gospel far and wide,” he said.
“I share a certain kinship with St. Thomas.”
Father Salvino, who grew up in Our Lady of Sorrows Parish in Vancouver, said from the time he mentioned to his parents that he was considering entering the seminary, through his many years of study, formation, and public support from local Catholics, he had moments of doubt and questioned if the priesthood was the right path for him.
He told The B.C. Catholic in an interview that the clergy abuse crisis that exploded in 2018 was a “real faith-shaking event” that led him to question his vocation. After many months, he came to realize what it meant to become a priest in the midst of challenging times. (See full interview.)
He assured all those gathered at the cathedral for his ordination: “in my own moments of questioning and wondering if this was the path God wanted, I can tell you without a doubt in my mind, I have never, ever, ever, been left alone.”
He thanked the family members, priests, and Catholics present for their support.
“I can simply say thank you. I’m deeply grateful and overwhelmed in this moment but God in his goodness has never ever left me alone.”
Archbishop Miller reflected on the image of St. Thomas reaching his hand into Christ’s wound in his side, as depicted so vividly by the Italian artist Caravaggio in 1601.
“A priest’s hands, like those of the Apostle Thomas, must also reach out to touch the wounds of his people, to be close to them, like a good shepherd. Those who are in any way wounded in life must be able to find in him care and attention,” he said.
“There are so many wounded people, people wounded by material problems, people wounded by scandals of sexual abuse, people wounded by the tragedy of the Indian Residential Schools and the Church’s role in them, and people wounded by an almost limitless number of problems and concerns … Whenever a priest touches and cares for these wounds with tenderness, he is living out the gift of the laying on of hands that he received at his ordination.”
Father Salvino has been assigned as assistant pastor at St. Matthew’s Parish in Surrey.
He is the second priest to be ordained for the archdiocese in the COVID-19 era; the first was Father Richard Conlin in December. Due to restrictions at that time, Father Conlin was ordained in the presence of only a handful of priests and loved ones.
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