In a June 2 ceremony in Tampa, Florida, Fr. Rajeev Philip became the first U.S.-born priest to be ordained for the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church. Interested in the priesthood since his teen years, the 26-year-old Fr. Philip was educated in Roman Catholic schools in the Tampa area, and his family prayed together daily in their home. Fr. Philip said “it was not necessarily a sure thing that he would eventually become a Syro-Malabar priest”, as reported by CNS.
As reported by Catholicsun, Fr. Philip remarked that ““When I joined the seminary, I was kind of up in the air about where to join,” he said, adding he had considered the Roman Catholic Diocese of St. Petersburg, Florida, that encompasses the Tampa area. “There’s religious life, there’s the diocese, but I decided to join the Syro-Malabar Diocese,” he said. He was especially struck by St. John Paul II’s words in his 1995 encyclical “Ut Unum Sint” that “the church breathes with two lungs” — East and West.
The nationwide Syro-Malabar Diocese of St. Thomas is based in Chicago. The new priest did most of his undergraduate seminary study in Chicago, but was then sent to the Church’s home in India for a year of service. Fr. Philip later studied in Rome for three years in the seminary at the Pontifical International College Maria Mater Ecclesiae. It was there he solidified his desire for priesthood.
Source:Catholicsun
