The Marists: In The World

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Fr. Alfred Puccinelli

Fr. Puccinelli, right, is associate pastor of the Newman center at the Pontifical Catholic University of Parana, a grueling six-hour trip from Sao Paolo, Brazil. He is also involved in Marist vocation formation there, guiding 11 seminarians and staying in touch with some 65 potential candidates. And there’s more. He prefers to spend his free time in a favela (slum) several blocks away helping a group of Franciscan sisters.

Close to his heart is the 20,000 Afro-Brazilian Catholics in and around Urandi and Sebastiao Laranjeiras, and outback areas in the northeast state of Bagia, where he has also served. “I was in each parish two weeks a month, but I spent more time in a pickup truck than in church.”

“The people are poor and they struggle to survive,” he describes. “Their faith is extremely simple and fragile, due to the lack of priests.”

A native Californian, Fr. Puccinelli was ordained in 1966. He was a teacher, high school principal, seminary rector, nursing home chaplain, pastor and retreat master before being asked to become a missionary. When he was asked in 1988 by the General of the Society in Rome to consider working in Brazil, Fr. Puccinelli had never considered missionary service.

“This is another stage in my Marist life,” he says. “It’s unexpectedly rewarding to be able to bring Mary to the people of another country.”

In the World

The Marists are a missionary society. For the Atlanta Province that means they send members to far-flung places in Brazil and the Philippines. But they are also missionaries even here at home.

Fr. James Duffy is a pastoral minister at Our Lady of the Assumption in Atlanta, Georgia.

Each Marist considers himself on mission – a mission of bringing reconciliation, charity, and love into the world.

Fr. Joseph Pusateri as Pastor in Apia, Western Samoa.

For those who do venture overseas, the challenge is to bring community with them and to form community with the people of God wherever they are. And, they take with them a spirit of Mary’s “yes” to bringing Jesus into the world.