May 8 , 2006 • VOL. 44, NO. 9 • Oakland, CA

Three men to be ordained priests for diocese

By Carrie McClish
Staff writer

On May 20 three men will begin new lives as priests for the Oakland Diocese. They are Weerasak (Lee) Chompoochan, Jim Sullivan, and Peter Son Vo. Their ordinations will take place at St. Felicitas Parish in San Leandro.

Lee Chompoochan
Weerasak (Lee) Chompoochan’s journey to the priesthood began with one good long look.
As a youngster Chompoochan, who attended Mass nearly every day, would watch with a sense of awe as a priest presided at Mass. “I thought to myself, ‘He’s dressed very nice,’” he recalled. “And I wanted to be like him.”

Chompoochan’s call to ministry deepened several years later when he spent time working with missionaries in the hill country of his native Thailand. He traveled with members of the Sacred Heart of Jesus of Betharram, a religious congregation based there, who went to northern Thailand each summer to live with and serve members of the hill tribes, who were very poor.

The missionaries faced various challenges, such as walking long distances between the villages they served, Chompoochan said. “I felt they are Jesus in spirit. They worked very hard, but they looked very happy,” he explained. “That was a big motivation for me to be a priest.”

Chompoochan’s journey to the priesthood was also bolstered by growing up in a family that he described as “very religious.” Born in northeast Thailand, he is the middle child in a family of 10 children. An older sister is a nun and his seven brothers all went to the seminary to be educated.

Despite growing up in a large family, Chompoochan said that no one went hungry. “We had plenty of food to eat,” he said. “We didn’t worry about money. We’d just go out and find some food outside when I was a kid.” Their diet mostly consisted of rice and fish.
Chompoochan earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Saengtham College in Thailand. Then the Sacred Heart congregation, which he had joined, sent him to England to study English for two years. After returning to Bangkok, he studied theology at the major seminary.

Needing a break, Chompoochan left the seminary after completing his theological studies and took a job as a teacher at a Catholic school in Bangkok. There he taught English for two years to students in grades one through 12.

Chompoochan left the congregation after nearly 14 years – and only one year before he would have been ordained a priest for the congregation – because he felt called to serve as a diocesan priest rather than as a member of a religious community. He wanted to work more closely with people in a parish rather than live in a congregation that required a more structured lifestyle such as scheduled community prayers.

That desire to be a diocesan priest received a boost when his former rector in Thailand, Father Terry O’Malley, relocated to the Oakland Diocese. He invited Chompoochan to move to the East Bay as well. The prospective priest moved to the U.S. in 2002 and was accepted as a candidate for the diocese’s priestly formation program.

Chompoochan spent a year studying English, first at Holy Names University in Oakland and then at California State University East Bay before entering St. Patrick’s Seminary. He is completing a master’s of divinity degree.
The prospective priest spent his pastoral year at St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Concord., leraning from Father Jerry Brown, pastor at St. Francis, and the parish community. He accompanied Father Brown on visits to the sick and attended meetings with different parish groups.

“Even though I worried about my English, the language didn’t matter,” he said. “I could feel that we were one in Christ.”

Now that his ordination to the priesthood is days away, Chompoochan looks back on his journey with gratitude and the future with joy. “With the help of God,” he said, “I am ready.”

Jim Sullivan
When Jim Sullivan was a little boy he wanted to become a priest.

“I was very sure and steady about it,” he told The Voice. “I remember my grandmother remarking how my sisters frequently changed their ambitions, but I was steady in mine.”

Part of that early certainty likely came from observing his uncle, Jim Poole, who served as a priest for the Sacramento Diocese for 54 years. “He was a natural leader, and really, a born churchman,” Sullivan said. “Some men and women just seem born to the service of the Church. It’s their dream, their home, their life. Uncle Jim never wanted to be anything but a priest, according to my grandmother. He went to the minor seminary (high school) when he was 14.”

Unlike his uncle, Sullivan veered off the priesthood tract during his adolescence to pursue other interests. After high school, the Marysville, CA, native left his Sacramento Valley home to attend the University of California in Berkeley, where he majored in political science. Then he got a job at the Berkeley campus and remained employed there for 15 years in the Career Planning and Placement Center.

“I had a rotating series of assignments that varied with the time of the academic term,” he said. “I liked the job for the variety and loved it for the people. The truth is, I took the job because I wanted my summers off!”

As much as he enjoyed working on the UC campus Sullivan remained open to the possibility that God might want to eventually call him to the priesthood.

Sullivan was in his mid-30s when it happened. “I heard the call unmistakably,” he said.
In 1995 Sullivan enrolled at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley. After earning a bachelor’s degree in philosophy he “fell so in love” with the subject that he stayed to earn the master’s degree. “My thesis was on Erich Fromm,” he said.

Sullivan subsequently enrolled at St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park.

The years at the seminary have been both nurturing and inspiring, Sullivan said. In addition to a faculty that he described as “loving, faith-filled, supportive, joyful and encouraging,” the content of the courses was challenging and provocative.

“Some of the courses simply immerse you in mystery – the fathomless mysteries of God, of God’s love for us and of how that love plays out through the ministries of the Church,” he said. “St. Patrick’s emphasizes a healthy balance between the facets of formation – spiritual, academic, personal.”

Although he originally began the process to ordination for the Diocese of Sacramento, where he prefers the summer heat to the fog and breezes of the Bay Area, Sullivan transferred to the Oakland Diocese because of the concentration of intellectual opportunities in the area. “Between St. Patrick’s Seminary and the Graduate Theological Union I can take the occasional course to help stay fresh and active mentally,” he said.

Sullivan supplemented his academic program by completing two pastoral years, one in the Sacramento Diocese and one in the Oakland Diocese. The best part of those experiences, he said, was working with parish staffs, learning about their jobs and responsibilities and assisting them with their ministries. “I have been tutored by some first-rate disciples on staffs of the parishes I’ve worked in,” he said.

The behind-the-scenes experience of living in a rectory also proved to be enlightening and pleasant. “My uncle’s rectory in Sacramento was like a second home to me, but to actually live in a rectory, with the priests, to get onto the rectory schedule and routine, was very helpful to me. I enjoyed rectory life, and I think that bears well for the future!”

Peter Son Vo
Peter Son Vo can still remember the first time he talked to his mother about having a vocation for religious life. She responded by saying he could not study for the priesthood because his uncle had been killed by the Viet Minh because he was a seminarian.

That conversation failed to deter Vo. Rather it strengthened him and galvanized his family. “From the day I decided to follow a journey to the priesthood, my parents prayed for me every day,” he said. “They always encouraged and reminded me how to be a good person. I have received very much support from my family.”

Vo was born in 1970 into a devout Catholic family in central Vietnam and learned early on how to sustain his faith despite threats from the Communist government. He was five years old when Da Nang fell to Communism, and the political repression and substandard conditions soon made life unbearable for the family. His father became a political prisoner because he had worked for the Saigon government.

During his youth Vo, the youngest of five siblings, lived with a Catholic family near a high school he attended because his own home was too far away. The house was next door to a Catholic church and Vo attended Mass daily.

One day the pastor asked Vo to live in the rectory and help with parish activities. Vo assisted the priest with the housework, including the cooking and gardening. He also took on such chores as doorkeeper, sacristan, choir member and acolyte. During this time Vo said he did not consider a vocation to the priesthood.

That changed, however, when Vo finished high school. One day the priest asked the youth to go with him to visit some of the sick members of the parish. After doing so Vo began to vision his future. “I believe that I started thinking seriously about the priestly vocation from that day on,” he told The Voice.

He joined the formation program to the priesthood for the Diocese of Da Nang, even though the seminary had been closed by the government. In the absence of a seminary, he studied at parishes and a school in the cathedral. As part of his training the bishop asked him to study English in business at the Ha Noi University, where Vo graduated in 1998.

That same year Vo and his parents came to the U.S. as refugees. During this time Father Hy Khae Nguyen, who also came from the Diocese of Da Nang and had affiliated with the Oakland Diocese, helped Vo join the diocese. Bishop John Cummins and Father Jerry Kennedy, then diocesan vocations director, accepted Vo into the formation program. They encouraged him to spend some time in the Bay Area to learn as much as he could about the cultural and social life of the area.

Vo got a laboratory job and lived at St. John the Evangelist Church in San Francisco, where members of the Sulpice Fathers lived. He studied at City College before entering St. Patrick’s Seminary in 2000.

The prospective priest received much practical experience about parish life during his pastoral year at St. John the Baptist Parish in El Cerrito, a parish noted for its social, ethnic and economic diversity. He said that Father John Maxwell, pastor, served as a mentor and coach who helped him learn how to relate to parishioners and provided examples of leadership and service.

After observing the great diversity present in the Church in the East Bay, Vo said he hopes to help foster a spirit of harmony, unity and collaboration in parishes with different cultures, languages and traditions. “I will try to help the people to remove any barriers that separate us as the people of God,” he said.

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