FROM  FATHER JOSHUA OTUSAFO, C.S.Sp.  

Dear friends and parishioners,

 Greetings, in all humility, I am happy to accept the responsibility to be the parochial administrator of pastoral region two. I am really inspired by the generosity, faith and hard work of each of you as evident in your history and I count on your continual support and long experiences in the way forward.

To help you get to know me, I thought you would love to have some more information about my background than I have already provided elsewhere.

I grew up in Nungua, a suburb of Accra – the capital of Ghana, in a devout Catholic family, where I was the second of three children – sandwiched by two sisters.  As a young boy, in primary school, I was single handedly brought up by my late grandmother.  She was a diehard religiously catholic. She made sure I attended daily morning mass and mass every weekend.

In the process, I became altar server competing to serve every Sunday in the company of 10-15 other servers. You were not allowed to serve if you missed Saturday Mass rehearsals. In addition, you had to master the names of every single thing in the sacristy and in church.  Grandmother encouraged me to serve God on the altar.  She thought me the Christian way of life.

I remember she would let me say the Grace before and after meals.  I therefore learned to pray very early in my life. I owe much of my Catholic upbringing to my late grandmother (may her soul and the souls of all the faithful departed rest in eternal peace).

In high school, I had a profound experience of God calling me to become a priest.  One day after a Sunday Mass service, an altar server friend came over to me to say, ¨let´s become priests when we grow up¨.  These words were the magic words that propel and inspire me on my journey to the priesthood. No wonder, I pursued the passion to become a priest in the seminary after two years of college studies.

I joined the seminary run by the Holy Spirit Fathers in 1993 as an aspirant. I became a postulant in 1994 then a novice in 1995. I did three years of studies in philosophy and two years parish attachment in Senegal from 1998-2000. I then went to Nairobi in Kenya for four years of Theology and social communication.

After ordination in 2004,  I came to the archdiocese of Cincinnati in 2005 working in the Dayton area as associate pastor of the former St. James Resurrection Church now St. Benedict the Moor in Dayton, St. Augustine Church in Germantown, St. Mary Church in Camden. And over the past year I have had the privilege to work at Holy Family and St. Mary Churches near downtown Dayton.

Dear friends and parishioners, it is thus with a deep sense of humility that come to region two to serve you.  I am deeply grateful to all my superiors both religious and diocesan for the confidence placed me. And I am equally thankful to you all for the warm welcome that has been shown to me in advance of my arrival and I look forward to getting to know the good and wonderful people of Pastoral region two. I ask for your prayers and I assure you of mine.