A Maryknoll seminarian realizes his lifelong dream of ordination.
Saying he felt like he was dreaming, an exuberant Victor Mutobera could barely contain his happiness after his ordination Saturday as Maryknoll’s newest priest.
“I feel so joyful, blessed by the people who have surrounded me,” he said following the ceremony that filled Maryknoll’s Our Lady Queen of Apostles Chapel in Ossining, New York. “I am filled with gratitude for what God has done for me in my life.”
Father Mutobera says he dreamed of becoming a priest since he was a child growing up in Kakamega, Kenya, where he would pretend to celebrate Mass with his friends and twin brother.
Bishop Joseph Perry of the Archdiocese of Chicago, who conferred the sacrament of Holy Orders, expressed the same enthusiasm for the new missioner’s future.
“Father Victor will exhibit a joy that comes from knowing the love of God is the ultimate driving force of his ministry,” the prelate said.
“First, a priest will be carrying out God’s will primarily on behalf of the marginalized, the poor, the brokenhearted, the captives, people who are enmeshed in hopeless circumstances, just as Jesus envisioned his own prophetic ministry,” Bishop Perry said.
Referencing the first reading at the ordination Mass, Isaiah 61:1-3, he said, “Like the prophet, the priest is thrilled to be one to bring such good news to the people.”
Bishop Perry later said he lives “practically around the corner” from the Maryknoll formation house in Chicago and that he sometimes celebrates Masses for the seminarians. “I used to get Maryknoll magazine when I was in grade school. I’ve been reading it ever since,” he said, adding that he once envisioned himself as a missionary priest in distant lands.
Recalling the biblical metaphor of Jesus as a good shepherd, Bishop Perry said such service comes from “a commitment of the heart.”
Maryknoll’s superior general, Father Lance Nadeau, who served in Kenya as a chaplain at Kenyatta University in Nairobi and mentored Father Victor when the young man was a student there, used similar terms during the mission sending ceremony which took place later that day. The Creator, he said, “shapes a heart longing for God, and no human heart will be satisfied by anything or anyone less than the God of mission. Our hearts are restless until they rest in him.”
Father Nadeau said the new missioner is assigned to Mwanza, Tanzania, to “a great place to experience the mystery of the Triune God and us,” a parish in the Mabatini section of the city. He described Mabatini as “a densely populated, under-resourced informal settlement with many serious infrastructure problems, home to tens of thousands of struggling working-class families, a multi-ethnic, multi-religious community with streets crowded with vendors and children and filled with people bursting with kinetic energy.”
Father Mutobera said he was excited about the assignment because of the vibrant faith in Africa and because there’s “great need for people to serve in Africa.”
While Father Mutobera will be serving in Tanzania, which borders Kenya, his father, Timothy Mutobera, said he and his wife, Roselyne Barasa Mutobera, would be happy for their son wherever he is sent.
“All we were praying for was his success to be getting ordained as a priest,” his father said. “Now that he has been ordained, in the future, even if he may go to China, we will not mind, because he was given to God.”
Both of the new priest’s parents were present at the ordination, but his twin brother was unable to obtain a visa to the United States to attend.
The congregation included Kenyans living in various parts in the United States who came to celebrate the joyful occasion.
Maryknoll Brother Ryan Thibert, with whom Father Mutobera served while doing overseas training in Cochabamba, Bolivia, said the new priest will be “a wonderful missioner who will keep going. No matter where he goes, the Lord will lead him.”
Brother Thibert said his colleague had brought joy and happiness to the community where they worked.
“One thing I noticed about Victor is that people really connected with him,” Brother Thibert said. “They were drawn to him, and he was drawn to the people. Being a missioner involves vulnerability, being sent to serve, and being called from the people. Victor has always allowed the Holy Spirit to work in his vocation, particularly with the Bolivian people.”
Father Mutobera’s Spanish language teacher, who came from Bolivia to attend the ordination, gave further testament to the missioner’s gift for relating to others.
“He didn’t know any Spanish when he arrived, but he always showed a great desire to learn, and was very curious about our language and culture,” Karla Rojas Cuba said. She noted that the goal of the students in the overseas program is not only to learn the language but to immerse themselves in the culture — which he did during his two years in Cochabamba.
“To be at Victor’s ordination has been a great blessing for me because he was not only my student but a person with whom we shared a lot together,” Rojas Cuba said, noting he would give reflections to the teachers and students when a priest was not available to celebrate Mass.
While in the seminary in Chicago, Father Mutobera assisted at Mother of the Americas, a parish in the Little Village neighborhood with a primarily Hispanic congregation where his Spanish fluency was put to good use. The pastor, Father Thomas Boharic, said about 50 parishioners made the journey to New York for the ordination.
“He has made a big impact on many people,” Father Boharic said. “So many people love Father Victor.”
Father Mutobera has “this spirit of joy, a contagious happiness expressed in the way he carries himself,” Father Boharic said. His preaching, he added, “transmits a holy joy of the Holy Spirit, the celebratory nature of our faith.’
Father Mutobera will, no doubt, bring that same joy and zeal for community to mission.
“Right now, I think my greatest focus as I go into mission will be to learn, to learn and grow,” he said. Long term, he said, he would like to minister to the sick, possibly with a hospital ministry, which he also did in Chicago while studying for ordination.
Giovana Soria and Deirdre Cornell contributed reporting to this article.
Featured image: Maryknoll Father Victor Mutobera, ordained June 6 at the Maryknoll Society’s Our Lady Queen of Apostles Chapel in Ossining, New York, radiates joy as he leaves the chapel after the Mass of Holy Orders. Father Mutobera, who underwent eight years of preparation for the missionary priesthood, is assigned to serve in Tanzania. (Octavio Durán/U.S.)
