For the past several weeks, many British Columbians, and Catholics in particular, have been grappling with complex and mixed emotions.
The announcement of the discovery of remains buried near a Kamloops residential school has led to findings at other grave sites, resulting in public discourse about a dark period of Canadian history and the re-opening of wounds.
As temperatures rose, Catholic churches have been burned to the ground or vandalized in acts the police are investigating as suspicious or hate crimes.
Meanwhile B.C.’s relaxation of COVID-19 pandemic measures are being greeted with glee by some who are eager to go back to church and regular family gatherings, and with anxiety by others who are hesitant or still grieving the losses of loved ones they may not have been able to properly mourn due to travel or other restrictions.
How can a young priest with holy oils fresh on his hands react?
Father Raffaele Salvino believes now is the time for him, and Church as a whole, to listen.
“There are a lot of stories that need to be shared or that need to be told. I think the first order of business is to sit back and just hear what God has been doing in the lives of the faithful of the diocese,” Father Salvino said in an interview with The B.C. Catholic before his July 3 ordination.
He describes seeing a “mixture of joy and sorrow, grief and hope.”
“There’s the tragedy of the residential schools and coming face to face with our own provincial history. On the other hand there’s this overwhelming excitement that the COVID restrictions are coming to a definite end,” he said.
Father Salvino admits that after the announcement of the Kamloops grave site became news he was apprehensive about wearing his clerical collar in public. Could he proudly represent the Catholic Church in public? How would others perceive him?
“I think my own slight discomfort in public, with a couple more stares than usual or maybe looks of disgust, is worth it for the potential conversation that can happen,” he said.
“If wearing the collar can be an invitation for someone to come and speak, share their thoughts, I think I owe it to them if I’m telling them that I’m a minister of Christ, who turned no one away and always put himself in the public marketplace.”
It’s not the first time Father Salvino has wrestled with serious concerns about current events and his personal stake in the Catholic Church. A few summers ago, revelations of sexual abuse by clergy sent him spiralling through a crisis of faith. He was a seminarian at the time, on the path toward priesthood.
“Can I truly go forward and give my life in service to the Church? Is it a corrupt organization? Is it truly led by the Holy Spirit? There were those questions I had to ask.”
He called it a “real faith-shaking event” during which he wrestled with these questions and many others that rattled around in his mind for months.
“It was a painful process. To anyone else who is really going through a crisis right now I would say from my own personal experience: this can often take a while, but something profound is afoot,” he said.
“It really is an invitation deeper into the heart of Christ, or the side of Christ, the wound on his side. His heart was opened for all and there’s a refuge there in the midst of suffering.”
Father Salvino now looks back on that time of questioning and sees it as the moment he was most challenged to have faith and trust.
“This is going to sound cliché, but I really had to, in prayer and just ask myself: ‘do I believe that God who has done good things in the past is continuing to do good things now? Do I believe that God who has brought good out of evil in the past in my own life, will he continue to do that for me, on this path of discernment, and will he continue to do that for the Church?’”
After months of wrestling, Salvino concluded that God is still good and trustworthy, even when everything around us can seem bleak. It’s a lesson he’s reminding himself of this year.
“Anyone who is going through a crisis of faith or serious doubt, in that is actually hidden a situation to lean more heavily on Christ. It’s been true for me, and I want to speak boldly,” he said.
“I promise, if you are going through a really tough time in your faith and it really feels like it’s an attack on your trust in God, in there, at the core of this whole thing, is God’s own invitation: ‘do you trust me? Do you trust that I love you, that I am God, that I can bring good out of this evil?’”
Father Salvino didn’t grow up expecting to become a priest but came to the vocation gradually as his family also slowly gained a deeper understanding of their Catholic faith together.
Their journey together, for example, took them from skipping Mass so they could watch World Cup games to making Mass a priority on Sundays and praying before meals. “When God called me to the seminary, it was like the natural continuation of the trend that God had been taking my family on recently,” he said.
He wants to offer the same trust that carried him in his time of doubt to those who are discouraged. “It’s so easy to compare yourself, like, ‘they are a good Catholic family and we are not.’ It does God a disservice because God is here to work with us, and he certainly did with my family.”
Now assigned as assistant pastor at St. Matthew’s in Surrey, Father Salvino is “extremely grateful for how supportive this diocese has been,” he said, calling it an “enormous family.”
He is eager to start ministering as a school chaplain at St. Matthew’s Elementary and Holy Cross Regional Secondary, as well as serving Catholics in Surrey, starting with listening to them.
“I truly believe the time of suffering we’ve gone through, God was doing something and is speaking to us in it. I think the time right now is to listen and pray and see what that might be.”
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