​​As I start this new job, I am wrapping up my time (a little over two years) as a full-time youth minister at St. John Neumann in Lancaster. Prior to that, I spent a year as the campus minister of Shippensburg University, where I worked alongside Fr. Ben Dunkelburger. Before heading to Shippensburg, I was a full-time teacher at Resurrection Catholic School, where I first got to know Fr. Norbert, and I was simultaneously working part-time as the youth minister of St. Catherine of Siena Catholic Church in Quarryville, PA. That is the area I grew up, and St. Catherine’s is the parish I was heavily involved in until I had moved to Shippensburg.

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Before answering the call to become a minister, I had received my education degree, I was a missionary for 6 months, and a seminarian for the Diocese of Harrisburg for a year and a half. I am also pursuing my master’s degree through the Theology of the Body Institute. I believe all of those experiences are going to help me in both of my roles that I am hopping into at St.  John’s. You will come to find I am an outgoing person, so please catch me when you see me to introduce yourself, whether that be at Masses over the weekend, daily Masses, in the Adoration Chapel, at the grocery store, etc. I already had a great introduction to some of the teens in YM as I led a camping retreat at the beginning of August for teens that attend either St. John Neumann or St. John the Baptist, and I look forward to getting to know the rest of you, whether you’re young or old, new to the parish or you’ve called St. John’s home for 50 years.

 

God bless,
Joseph Gonzalez