CENTER SECTION: MULTICULTURAL MINISTRY
International Priests: Gifts and Challenges

by Liz O’Connor

About 20 percent of the priests in active service in the United States were born in other countries—some 7,000 priests fall into the category of “international priests,” the term now commonly used for these clergy.

The largest numbers come from India, Nigeria, Mexico, Colombia, the Philippines, and Poland, but there are significant numbers from other countries. According to the Rev. Aniedi Okure, OP, former coordinator of ethnic ministries for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, most are serving in the Pacific Northwest, the South, and the New York metropolitan area, but “they are all over the place.”

Father Okure was co-author with Dean Hoge of the study published in 2006, International Priests in America: Challenges and Opportunities (Liturgical Press). In an interview with CHURCH, he said that study was commissioned by the National Federation of Priests Councils, and the researchers gathered information from dioceses, religious communities of men, and the international priests themselves. Okure himself is from Nigeria but has been in the United States for 18 years, serving among other places at a parish in the Archdiocese of Boston, as a hospital chaplain in Pennsylvania, and as a priest in residence in a parish while teaching at the University of California at Davis, before going to the USCCB. He is currently on sabbatical at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.; his academic field is sociology.

International priests come to the United States for a variety of reasons, he said. About 10 percent are living in rectories and helping in parishes while they are pursuing studies at U.S. colleges and universities. Some of these decide to stay here when their studies are completed, and make the transition to being priests of U.S. dioceses. Another group, notably the Vietnamese, come to the United States to be with their families who have settled here. And some come for a limited, usually three- to five-year period, as the result of agreements made between their bishops and U.S. bishops in need of priests.

For all of these international priests, coming to the United States is a major dislocation. “The priest who leaves home has really left home,” leaving family and friends; “his social capital is reduced to zero.” He has to find his way around, figure out how to get a driver’s license (even though he may have had a car and a license in his home country); he needs to get acclimated on any number of levels.

Even such a minor activity as rooting for a sports team is a wrench: in most of the rest of the world, football—soccer—is something of a passion, but a priest new the United States is apt to draw a blank if he tries to share that enthusiasm, and he is expected to learn at least something of the language about baseball and American football.

By and large, Okure said, the priests report congregations being welcoming, and they feel most at home celebrating liturgy with the community. But even for a priest who is fluent in English, accents can be troublesome. And some priests feel hurt because, having struggled to learn English as a second or third language, a project they feel proud to have accomplished, they are criticized because their American English is not perfect. Some feel as though they are relegated to the least important parish tasks, the least-attended Masses, the jobs no other parish priest wants to take on. Sometimes those feelings reflect a situation where the pastor is trying to minimize the language problem. “If an international priest begins to feel that he’s being looked down on just because of his accent, that’s a real turn-off,” Okure said. Programs to improve diction and learn American idioms and pronunciations can be helpful in these cases, he said.

But the question of English is not the only problem in communication; cultures differ in their styles of formal and informal speech. So when a parishioner says to a newly arrived priest, “Hey, we should do lunch,” the parishioner may only be offering a friendly gesture or thinking of sharing lunch at some vague time in the future, while the priest may think he’s being invited to have lunch that day.

Unfamiliar Code

He spoke of one priest, able to celebrate in Eastern as well as Latin rites for Mass, who was used to people coming for communion with their arms crossed over their breasts as a sign of reverence. He didn’t know that in some places in the United States that posture is a kind of code for someone who is unable to receive the Eucharist—because of an irregular marriage, not being Catholic, or whatever—who wants to come forward for a blessing from the priest. The priest in question only found out that he was doing the wrong thing by giving them Communion when he overheard some other people discussing his mistake. “It took time before anyone explained it to him.”

Similar problems exist in rectories, where American priests are used to communicating by memos, notes and notices left on bulletin boards, general comments or invitations, and common understandings. Telling a story that he said he’s told before, he spoke of a priest he knows personally, who was very dynamic, had been involved successfully in youth work in his home country, and, having come to the United States for a five-year stint called Okure after a few months to say that he was very bored and had not been “invited to join in the parish activities.” “Not thirty minutes later,” Okure said, the pastor, whom he also happened to know, called Okure to ask his advice on dealing with this priest who was “just sitting in his room,” and “had never asked to be a part of what was going on.” That situation, easily resolved, was “purely a cultural misunderstanding,” but one which occurs more often than one might think.

American culture is more individualistic than cultures in many other lands where community is more important. Here, Okure said, everyone is expected to be very independent, to take all initiative, whereas, “In other cultures people might take you by the hand and walk you along the road—it’s show and tell.” Americans have to realize that this person has “a culture behind him, experience being a priest behind him, and would like to be treated as a friend,” just as little children would take a newcomer and spend time “showing how we kids on this block do things.” There are simply differences among cultures which come to the fore “when anybody moves from one culture to another.”

Priests who are members of religious orders—like Father Okure, a Dominican—have often been exposed to several cultures before coming to the United States. Those who work here with other members of their orders generally do very well, as they are used to living in community, often in international settings; those who are assigned to parishes and live in rectories with diocesan priests often report great loneliness because they miss the community life to which they were accustomed.

A commonly cited sore point is the degree of lay participation in the running of parishes. “Some international priests do not expect involvement of the laity in the decision-making process” when it comes to parish matters; if a parish has a well-established pastoral and finance council that is used to being heard, this can be a problem. Some priests “are not used to taking orders from the laity,” and a few are particularly rattled if they find themselves in a situation where their boss is a woman. But Okure said these are not universal problems among international priests, and an earlier study showed some American priests had the same problems.

Rushing Where?

On the positive side of the ledger, international priests also often bring with them new spiritualities and new styles of preaching which may breathe new life into a parish. Many, however, are not used to the American style of finishing Sunday Mass in time to clear the parking lot for the next congregation to come in, and can be distressed if people start obviously checking their watches at the forty-five- minute mark. “People are rushing in and rushing out—where are they rushing to?” Okure asked. “It’s a big adjustment.” Also, there are some issues, such as homosexuality, that in the United States are treated with great care and diplomacy; that may not be so true in a priest’s home country, and an international priest who speaks out strongly against gay and lesbian people is apt to find himself in hot water.

Overall, Father Okure said that the international priests who prosper and minister most effectively in the United States are those who have the advantage of a comprehensive orientation program—perhaps offered by the diocese—a mentor, and a receiving pastor who takes the trouble “to learn something about where the priest comes from.” International priests also require some time serving in parishes in order to gradually become acclimated before they’re appointed pastors: they need to be more at home here and to have learned the ropes under the tutelage of experienced American priests.

Okure said he heard over and over that international priests wanted the American priests with whom they worked to “remember that this is a colleague, a fellow priest.” The way in which problems such as accents are approached makes a huge difference. If the international priest has the impression that “this pastor cares about me,” then he can accept correction and direction as coming from a friend.

Liz O’Connor is the editor of CHURCH magazine.