(left) Fr. Vimencio Ignatio. M.S.; (right) Mass
at Shrine Church in Silang, Cavite, PhilippinesMy father is Victorino and mother, Esmelda. My father died in 1987, two years before my ordination. My mother was a teacher and raised us four boys, of which I am the eldest. One of my brothers, and engineer and engaged in politics, died in 2007. Another one of my brothers is also an a mechanical engineer. He now lives in the United States. My younger brother studied architecture but eventually chose agriculture and is now a farmer.
I studied in a school run by the Missionaries of La Salette in San Mateo, a first calls urban city in the southern Philippines. The director of our school was Fr. Maurice Cardinal, M.S., now 92 years old now and living an active retirement in California. Subsequently I entered the seminary of San Luis in the northern Philippines. From there my class was sent to the University of La Salette in Santiago City in the northern Province of Isabela.
I was then sent to Silang, Cavite, a La Salette Shrine, to study philosophy and then went to in Tagaytay City for my theology. I then served in several different pastoral settings. I professed my first vows as a La Salette in 1981 and was ordained in 1989. My first assignments at St. John’s Parish in Santiago and two other parishes in the same area.
After this period, I was called to go to the United States to minister with Fr. Maurice Cardinal in Our Lady of the Desert Parish, in Apple Valley, California. I worked there for five years, and then returned to the Philippines. At this point I began to minister at the Shrine of Our Lady of La Salette in Silang, Cavite for several years.
Yes, it was in 2004 that I was sent to southern Australia to serve in the Diocese of Narrabi, New South Wales, the most densely populated area of the Australian continent. I first served as Pastor of St. Francis Xavier Parish in Narrabi. I then served in two other parishes.
Fr. Vimenciao after First Communion
Mass with Australian children
We are three La Salette from the Province of the Philippines and three of our Indian La Salettes serve in the Diocese of Parramatta in New South Wales, in the desert hinterland of Sydney which is on the southeastern coast of the Australian Continent.
I work in a large district whose area is as large as France, occupied by huge farms of thousands of acres. Every week we travel long distances to get to several of our churches, scattered some 100 miles or more from each another. We can visit them only twice a month.
For me it is a call to humility and perseverance. Our Mother weeps because of the sins of her children. She invites us to true happiness by following the Way of her Son. In fact, as La Salettes, we cannot invite others to reconciliation if we have not personally experienced it first! We must begin by approaching the face of God humbly; only then we are ready to approach others, to assist in bringing them back to her Son, Jesus. This free love of God is always available to all her children.
The La Salette cross leads us not only on the path to Calvary, but also to the gift of reconciliation and the Resurrection. Our call as La Salettes is to bring peace and reconciliation but, as always, we must also bear our own cross and help others to bear it with hope.
La Salette window above altar in Shrine Church in Silang, Cavite, Philippines