By Voice staff

Three men with diverse cultural and professional backgrounds will commit their faith, skills and experience to the service of God’s people in the Oakland Diocese when they are ordained as priests on May 16 at All Saints Church in Hayward. Below is a brief profile on each of the future priests:

Rolando Bartolay
Rolando Bartolay, a native of the Philippines, arrived in the U.S. on Sept. 9, 2005, to complete the theological studies he had begun at Loyola School of Theology in Quezon City. His journey to ordination began in elementary school when he first felt called to be a priest. Following graduation from high school, he entered a seminary college formation program of the Claretian Missionaries and earned a degree in philosophy.

After working as a clerk in a private company and serving in a mission among the urban poor, he returned to the seminary for graduate study and taught in the Claretian College of Philosophy. Throughout his studies he felt drawn to serve as a missionary and says his ordination in the Oakland Diocese is the way the “Holy Spirit has led me to fulfill my calling to do a priestly missionary task.”

The second eldest of nine children, Bartolay, 37, describes his family as “a typical Filipino big family, consolidated by popular Filipino devotions and religiosity.” His mother will be present when Bishop Allen Vigneron ordains him to the priesthood.

He has spent the past year at St. Mary Parish in Walnut Creek, where he developed a new ministry to those who are hospitalized or homebound, and taught religion to the seventh graders in the parish school.

Juan Franco
The seeds of a priestly vocation were first planted in Juan Franco by his father, who had been a seminarian and taught his son to love and serve God. After his father died when Franco was 10, his mother supported her four sons by working in her father’s grocery store in their hometown of Morelia, Michoacan, Mexico. She died five years ago.

When a priest invited young Franco to visit an orphanage, he realized that he was called to the priesthood. He joined the Franciscans and for a time worked as a housekeeper in Jerusalem, where the Franciscans have custody of the sacred places of the Holy Land. He came to the U.S. in 1997 and worked as a landscaper and house painter, arriving in the East Bay at the invitation of his brother, Sergio, who lives in Turlock.

His hobbies include painting, molding sculpture, and composing poetry and music.

Franco, 42, holds a master of divinity degree from Catholic Theological Union in Chicago He spent his pastoral year as a deacon at Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish in Fremont, where, he said, the parishioners and pastor helped “reinforce my diocesan priesthood vocation.” His brother Sergio and his aunt Josefina Franco of Morelia will attend his ordination.
 

Kenneth Nobrega
Kenneth Nobrega says his call to priesthood began as a “whisper” while he was attending Mass at St. Clement Church in Hayward. The Oakland native was busy operating two successful businesses — as a licensed general building contractor and as administrator of a licensed care facility for mentally disabled men, but the whisper continued to grow louder. When a priest asked him if he had ever considered becoming a priest, he said “Yes.”

Nobrega, 48, said his Portuguese grandparents, who raised him after his parents were unable to do so, were the greatest influence on his decision to be a priest. He remembers his grandfather praying on his knees beside his bed and his grandmother telling Nobrega and his brother stories from the Bible and praying the rosary daily.

“Their love of family and simple faith in God carried them through many difficulties as they acclimated into a new country and took upon themselves the raising of another set of children,” he said.

Nobrega spent his pastoral year at St. Philip Neri Parish in Alameda. He said he wants to become a priest to help reverse “the world’s” pull away from God. “Someone has to be able to stand up against the societal grain and say ‘no’ and help lead people back towards God. I’m willing to be one of those who will help in this, our Church’s mission.”

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