Derek Saldanha

There is a gentleness to Fr. Derek Saldanha that people notice right away. He does not need many words to make you feel welcome, and in St. Cloud, parishioners like to say his testimony is stronger than anything he could put into words.

To those who know him, he is simply a man of God, humble and full of love. They know him not by his title or the degrees behind his name, but by the warmth he brings to them and by a faith people feel in his presence. He has said his greatest joy is watching God's healing and transforming power come alive in people.

He came to the priesthood from a long way off. He grew up in Bombay in a home where faith was woven into ordinary days, his mother teaching catechism at their parish and the whole family kneeling for the rosary together every night, a habit he still keeps. He studied business at the University of Pune and worked in information technology before moving to the United States in 2009, where graduate studies at Franciscan University of Steubenville drew him closer to the sacramental heart of the Church. It was there that the priesthood came into focus for him, the realization that it is through a priest's hands that people receive the Eucharist and are reconciled with God, and he knew that was how the Lord was asking him to serve. He was ordained for the Diocese of Orlando in 2019 and served parishes in Orlando and Altamonte Springs before he was sent to shepherd St. Thomas Aquinas.

There is more to him than the parish, too. Since he was young, Fr. Derek has followed politics and current affairs closely; back in India he wrote letters to newspaper editors on the issues facing the Church and the wider world, and he still loves helping people see how their faith speaks to the questions they are actually living with. That same care reaches beyond his own pews, and the Magnify organization honored him for the tenderness he brings to young people and adults with disabilities. Through all of it runs the hope he named on the eve of his ordination, to preach the Word of God with zeal and meaning, and to give it his everything.