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Growing up in Kensington, Penn., with a mother whose roots were Slovakian and a father of Italian ancestry, young Paul Sicilia hardly seemed a candidate for a Hispanic ministry. It was his Italian immigrant grandmother, however, who laid the foundation for his future work as a Spanish-speaking priest in South Texas and his world travels.
She spoke only Italian and, since she looked after the young Paul while his mother worked, the two developed an especially close relationship. As a child, he would read to “Nonna” from an Italian Bible and Lives of the Saints and the two would listen to scratchy LPs of Italian opera, of which his grandmother was especially fond.
“So I learned Italian from her,” said Msgr. Sicilia, “and then it made it easier to learn Spanish when I went to Mexico, right after I was ordained.”
Ordained in Ohio in 1960, he attended the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, a school originally founded to provide German-speaking priests for the large influx of German immigrants during the latter part of the 19th century. When the need to produce Spanish-speaking priests became apparent, Msgr. Sicilia volunteered and was sent to the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico in Mexico City to study Spanish and return to start a Spanish program at the Josephinum, one of the first such programs in the United States.
It was only a short leap for him from Italian to Spanish. In fact, he preached and heard confessions in Spanish before ever doing so in English. He taught Spanish at the Josephinum for 13 years, later receiving an outstanding alumni award for establishing their Spanish program. He also used his knowledge of the language to celebrate Spanish Masses at Ohio State University for Latin American students and Cuban exiles and to serve migrant workers in Fremont.
In 1966 he started a group called Intercambio, taking six or more of his students on two-month summer projects in the mountains of Mexico in order to give them the experience of a third world environment. “We didn’t do much for the people, but they did an awful lot for the students,” said Msgr. Sicilia, noting the culture-shock for young people who had never had to live without running water or television.
Following his teaching at the Josephinum, he served as pastor for a year at a church in Pennsylvania, but found no outlet for his Spanish skills so asked his bishop for a transfer to San Antonio. Here he had two old friends, Archbishop Patrick F. Flores and Father Virgil Elizondo, whom he had known since the ’70s through his membership in the Mexican American priests’ association. “They’re the two main reasons why I picked San Antonio rather than, say, Santa Fe,” he said.
In San Antonio he first worked at the Mexican American Cultural Center (MACC) as Latin American Missionary Program Coordinator for a year and half, then served as parochial vicar at St. Philip of Jesus Church from 1976 to 1981 and as pastor at Holy Family Church from 1981 to 1986. From 1986 to 1998, he served as pastor at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Carrizo Springs, which was then still part of the Archdiocese of San Antonio. His final assignment was pastor of St. Joseph Church in Dilley from 1998 to 2005, where he celebrated his 71st birthday, 75th anniversary as a priest and his retirement in a combined celebration. “I told everybody to come because they were getting ‘three for one,’” he says, chuckling.
Over the years he has enjoyed opportunities to travel and a world map studded with push-pins chronicles just how far. Pins blanket Europe and the Americas. (“I’ve been in every country from Mexico on south,” he muses regarding the latter.) He has godchildren in Mexico and Ecuador and has said Mass in Father Damien’s church in Molokai. His sole African pin marks Morocco and he has also visited the Holy Land, Russia and Iran (“Before the Ayatollah took over,” he notes.) When interviewed, a push pin was soon to be added to Australia.
In 2004 he made a pilgrimage to sites of the Central American martyrs. This included visiting the spot where Father Rutilio Grande (with whom he had studied in 1972 at the Pastoral Institute in Quito, Ecuador) was killed and concelebrating Mass at the altar where Archbishop Oscar Romero was murdered.
In Dilley, he was responsible for the parish’s adopting a church in Quito as a sister parish, through a nun who had been a classmate of his at the Pastoral Institute. Another classmate nun from those days is involved in a handicraft cooperative in Bolivia to assist the people, and Msgr. Sicilia helps them market their work here.
His travels have also taken him on journeys to his Italian and Slovakian roots. He had long delved into his Italian ancestry and has visited his father’s family home in Rogliano in the region of Calabria (located in the toe of Italy’s boot), as well as traveling throughout Italy.
He only recently began to explore his mother’s Slovakian roots, visiting the house where his maternal grandmother (who arrived in America as an orphan) was born and the church where she was baptized. In the process, he got to know distant relatives living there.
“Before, I felt like 95 percent Italian,” he says. “So it kind of evened things out.” He spent several weeks in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, studying the language and culture. “But that was just enough to get my feet wet,” he adds. One of his future projects includes a return trip to visit with family and really learn the language. “If I could learn Slovak, then I could understand Russian and Polish,” says the linguistically talented monsignor.
He calls Venice his favorite city in the world (Prague is his second favorite) and a painting of Venice’s Grand Canal has a place of honor on his walls, as does a large framed picture of a mural painted by his grandfather long ago in Trencin, Slovakia, depicting the town’s castle.
Since his retirement, Msgr. Sicilia travels the archdiocese filling in where needed — Poteet, Dilley, Comfort, Lake Hills — with occasional travel jaunts for pleasure and learning. Looking over the memorabilia and souvenirs that adorn the walls, table tops and shelves in his Casa de Padres duplex recalls for him the many wonderful people he has known and happy times shared during his years in the priesthood.
“I’ve enjoyed being a priest,” he says thoughtfully. “I would do it over again.” |