OMC pastors bring commitment to ‘shared priesthood’

by JAMES STURDIVANT

The Rev. Bob Bazzoli and the Rev. Joseph P. Jocco, newly-arrived clergy at Chestnut Hill’s Our Mother of Consolation parish, have more in common than just a priestly vocation. Both are members of the religious order of Saint Francis de Sales, which has responsibility for administering the 150-year-old parish. And the philosophy of this order brings with it a certain approach to parish life.

“We follow the spirituality of St. Francis de Sales, so in our work and our ministry, whether it be high school or college, a program for young adults, service work or here at Our Mother of Consolation, the spirituality of St. Francis is what colors [and] directs our preaching, our ministry,” Bazzoli told the Local last week, sitting in a spacious office on the second floor of the parish house on Chestnut Hill Avenue.

The philosophy is straightforward, yet profound; challenging without being intimidating — welcoming, in fact. At least, that’s the way one understands it when talking to Bazzoli about what he hopes to bring to this spiritual community.

“The Sales believe that our spirituality [is that] all people are called to be holy. After the Second Vatican Council, that doesn’t sound too strange for us as a Catholic community, [but] we’ve believed this since the early 1600s — that the ordinary person, according to your state in life, is called to be as holy as the priest or the sister living in the convent or the monk living in a monastery. Our holiness is developed by being faithful to the state in life to which we are called,” Bazzoli said.

“One of his [Francis’] foundations was ‘Be who you are and be that well.’ Everyone has the opportunity to live extraordinary lives through our devotion,” added Jocco, who serves as parochial vicar (associate pastor) under Bazzoli. The two join fellow oblate, the Rev. Mike McCue, in tending to the education and spiritual well-being of the 3378-member parish.

For Bazzoli, this involves something beyond a top-down approach to ministry  — what he terms the “full, active, conscious participation of the faithful” in the life of the parish.

“For me, the spirit of the second Vatican council is ownership of the church by the people,” he said. “It’s not like, because I’m the pastor … I’m the only one making the decisions. It’s that shared priesthood that we have from our baptism that we need to acknowledge and to work with the community in carrying out the vision for the parish.”

“I will be here a maximum of 10 years,” Bazzoli continued. “My last assignment as pastor was six. There are families that have been here for a hundred years and will continue to be here, and they really need to take responsibility for the parish.”

Bazzoli said that he intends to carry on the work of his predecessor, the Rev. Steven Wetzel, who has moved to the Church of Saint Joachim in the Frankford section of Philadelphia. OMC is a growing parish, with more baptisms than funerals and an increasing number of weddings and young couples with children. As head vicar, Bazzoli sees his primary job as attending to the “sacramental and ritual life of the church, and [to] theological teachings.”

While education is central to the mission of the Order of St. Francis de Sales (it administers DeSales University in Allentown, where both Bazzoli and Jocco earned degrees before themselves assuming high school teaching posts for a time in the Philadelphia area), neither priest will be directly involved in the operations of Our Mother of Consolation School — at least, not officially.

“Both of us will be in the classrooms, visiting with the kids, disrupting the class and leaving, giving candy out and running away,” Bazzoli said, smiling. “I think of the school as an opportunity to play, for me to let off some steam.”