Francisco J. Ojeda

Long before he was Father Ojeda, Francisco was a boy newly arrived from Puerto Rico who could not speak enough English to ask his teacher where the lunchroom was. The one place he never felt like a stranger was church.

Warm, steady, and shaped by what it once felt like to be the outsider, Father Ojeda has a way of making a parish feel like the family he found in one as a boy. He says the priesthood was never foreign to him, and it shows in how the people who have come to know him describe him, not just by his title but by the joy he brings with him. At his installation, one longtime parishioner summed up the room: "We are so happy he is here. He's brought such joy to our parish." He is a son of Puerto Rico and of a family that gave up a great deal to raise him, and he is, after all of it, someone who believes no one is meant to walk their faith alone.

His path to the priesthood began at home. His father had studied for the priesthood himself, and those stories planted something early. When Francisco was nine, his father asked him outright if he wanted to become a priest. He said no. "But the Lord works in His own time," his father would say years later. What finally stayed with him came in a catechism class, when he could not understand why the shepherd in the Gospel would leave ninety-nine sheep to chase the one that wandered off. His catechist smiled and told him that this is what a priest is for, to keep the ninety-nine close while the Lord goes after the ones who are lost. He had already watched his parents love him that way, his mother sitting with him at night until he learned to spell, his father coming home tired but always ready to sit and talk. That was the shape of the life he wanted.

Today that life is centered on St. John Vianney, a parish as many-cultured as any in Orlando, where families from different countries and traditions fill the pews each week. Ojeda sees his own story in it. He calls the parish "heaven's preview, a communion of cultures united in the love of Jesus Christ," and describes that weekly gathering as a kind of Pentecost. He was installed there on the Feast of Christ the King, before a standing-room-only church, and he used the moment to point past himself. "Christ alone is king," he said. "Not us, not the world, not our fears or limitations, only Christ." For a boy who once could not find the words to ask a stranger for help, it is a fitting place to have landed, a house full of people from everywhere, learning to call it home together.