|
Sister Therese San Miguel, OSF, former director of the Educational/Formational Services Department, will now oversee the Educational Services Department. Her position will involve oversight of Catholic Schools, the Archdiocesan Catechetical Center, Campus Ministry, Mission Awareness, Youth Ministry/CYO and Young Adult Ministry — which has been shifted from the Office of Marriage and Family Life. While the Office of Worship remains in that department, it is no longer responsible for the RCIA program.
“This came from Archbishop Gomez’ first pastoral letter, that all pastoral activities are to be evaluated to do the best we can do,” said Roman. “Now, with the Department of Educational Services and the Department of Formational Services, evangelization and Christian initiation are to get more focused attention.”
RCIA brings new Catholics into full communion with the church, and Roman said the archbishop wanted it to be a separate agency to place necessary emphasis on the training of personnel. Full implementation of the RCIA program is the goal of the office, he said, and it will try to achieve it by providing resources and more support to people.
Roman, who will serve as director of the office in addition to his role as department head, initially met with Dolores Martinez, former director of the Office of Worship, and Mark Banasau, current associate director of the Office of Worship, to understand their work with RCIA in the past.
“I wanted to know what had been done, and also to meet with the FORUM Committee, which is an integral partner in implementing the process, to get to know them and what they have done,” said Roman. “The FORUM Committee consists of people experienced with RCIA who love, desire and enjoy the ministry. They have lots of experience in that area pastorally and otherwise.”
He added, “We want to continue the good things that were started, but to give it more attention than we had been.”
Roman hopes to carry that out through formation days, such as the one that will be held at Assumption Seminary on Dec. 2, a certification process, and providing resources and new materials, which are presently being reviewed. “It’s important that we get to know the materials out there,” he said.
As part of a planned certification process for RCIA, the office director said the use of materials would be important to that effort, making materials accessible to catechists and demonstrating their practicality in implementation, ultimately making their jobs easier.
Roman said that, since the restored Rite of Christian Initiation is relatively new in the church, a large amount of diverse materials needs to be reviewed. “More and more materials are coming forth to provide better choices,” he said. “This takes time and personnel to implement, and that is as it should be.”
In addition, a mentoring program is also being explored, in which the RCIA Office would walk with a parish through a whole year of RCIA, or a church would be twinned with members of the FORUM Committee.
RCIA is formation specific, Roman explained, and requires proficiency in numerous areas, such as catechesis, evangelization, liturgy, interviewing skills and discernment. “They are all little things that amount to big things,” he emphasized. Also, his office plans to offer advice on how to attract RCIA sponsors and recruit teams.
RCIA is an in-depth nine month process in which participants meet every week. It also involves liturgical events and Masses. Thus, Roman explained, it is difficult for parishes to fully implement. “We want to provide priests the resources and formation to do RCIA better,” he said.
For now, the RCIA director says he plans to continue the work begun by the Office of Worship. “This office is important as an extension of the archbishop’s vision, but the office is very limited. We can’t do the jobs of pastors. We need to help them to do their jobs better, providing our best,” said Roman.
In his role as director of the Department of Formational Services, he will also oversee the new Office of Evangelization, headed by Martha Sardina-Fernandez. Corpus Christi is the only other diocese in Texas to staff such an office, and the San Antonio Archdiocese can boast the only full-time post in the Lone Star State. “It is important to the archbishop and important to the local church,” Roman said. “It is something the archbishop has always wanted to have. It is the overreaching mission of the entire church.”
Although looking forward to his new job responsibilities, the former director of the Office of Marriage and Family Life also looks back proudly on a number of accomplishments achieved during his time in that ministry. He listed new visioning guidelines, more classes in Spanish, new resources, new teachers, new teacher preparation classes and the development of a weekend marriage preparation retreat similar to Marriage Encounter as providing solid footing for his successor.
Among the more popular offerings was the development of a new confirmation class just for engaged couples who needed to receive that sacrament, being recommended by their pastor.
Roman said the priorities of the new Office of Marriage and Family Life director would be to develop new retreats, continue classes and offer more classes in Spanish.
BIOGRAPHY
Originally from the San Francisco Bay area in San Mateo, Calif., Roman, 45, has been married for almost a dozen years to wife Lidia, who works at Assumption Seminary.
After a stint as a seminarian, he entered graduate school and obtained a master’s degree in theology from the University of San Francisco.
He taught at a Catholic high school for one year, then spent five years in a parish in San Francisco working in RCIA, marriage preparation, infant baptism preparation and adult education.
Roman then headed to the Archdiocese of Denver in 1999 to take the job as director of their Secretariat of Evangelization and Catechesis.
In that post he oversaw the offices of RCIA, youth ministry, catechesis, Respect Life and Marriage and Family Life.
After four years in that position, he accepted an offer to obtain his doctorate at Fordham University in New York City, where he studied for two semesters.
After a year in the Big Apple, Roman returned to Colorado, where he became the director of the Office of Marriage and Family Life at Our Lady of Loreto Parish in Foxfield, Colo.
Following almost a year in that post, he was invited by Archbishop Gomez to accept the Office of Marriage and Family Life directorship for San Antonio, bringing with him nearly two decades of service in various parish and diocesan ministries.
Roman, a parishioner at St. Anthony Mary Claret Church in San Antonio, has completed his coursework and is currently working on his dissertation on the baptismal catechumenate, his final step before obtaining a doctorate in religious education.
He also co-hosts the television show “Frequently Asked Questions” on CTSA-TV, Channel 15.
For more on the new Office of Evangelization and its director, Martha Sardina-Fernandez, see the Dec. 8 issue of Today’s Catholic newspaper. |