Aug. 3, 2016

By Dave Shampine
Staff Writer

WATERTOWN –Missionary of the Sacred Heart Father Joseph Christy had spent all 12 years of his priesthood in the city of his birth and upbringing, Bengaluru, India, when in 2013 it was “suggested” to him the time for a geographic transfer had come.

But this was not a move elsewhere in India’s state of Kamataka, of which Bengaluru, where more than eight million people live, is the capital city. Nor to anywhere else in India. 

The Provincial of Father Christy’s order, the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, wanted the 41-year-old priest to go to a nation in desperate need of missionaries due to a serious decline in vocations – the United States.
And since the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart are a fixture in Watertown, Jefferson County was to be Father Christy’s destination.

“It would be a good experience, to come and see,” Father Christy said in a recent interview as he reflected on the assignment that concluded at the end of July. 

He expected to be reunited with his 83-year-old mother, Mary Francina, four bothers and a sister in Bengaluru on the first of August.

“I have no regrets about coming here,” he said of Watertown, where he has been parochial vicar at St. Anthony’s and St. Patrick’s churches.  “There are good people here who are strong in their faith. The lay people are generous in sharing their time and talents.”

And all have been so accommodating to him, he said. “The people have been very outreaching in faith and fellowship.”

He made special note of the two pastors he has assisted at the linked parishes, Father Donald Robinson and Msgr. Robert Aucoin. “They have been very good to me, and easy to approach.”

The youngest of six children, he was ordained June 20, 2001, in Bengaluru, which is also referred to as Bangalore. He served about two years as an assistant pastor, then two more years as a pastor before being appointed in 2005 as superior of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart “Formation House,” the equivalent of a seminary, in Bengaluru.

Father Christy was elevated in 2009 to “Union Superior,” or regional provincial, of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart in India.

He remained in that position until he was ticketed for a trip to the United States.

Leaving administrative positions in his homeland to serve as an assistant pastor in Watertown was an insignificant move, he said.

“As a priest, this is nothing to do with titles,” he said, “Since I was involved already in all kinds of apostolates, the community in India was proposing me to go for some new experience in the United States for a couple of years.”

He spent much of 2013 preparing for his international move by assisting in a parish in Bengaluru and doing studies in Canon Law while processing his visa. That visa expires Aug. 2, prompting his decision to leave now.
“If I extend my stay, I have to stay for six months,” he said. “I’m not fully happy that I am leaving, but due to the situation, it is time to go.”

He said he is not ruling out a return to the United States. “If I want to, I can come back here after two years. But I’m not sure right now because my mother has been ill.” Currently, she is doing “very well,” he said.

A return will not come until he has completed his studies in Canon Law, for which he is working toward a master’s degree.

“If my provincial agrees, I can come back, but when and where, I do not know,” he said. “The good and wonderful experience I’ve had here gives me the courage and desire to come back.

“I have thoroughly enjoyed my stay here in these two parishes,” he said. “I will say that I miss my home in India, but Watertown has become my home, like family.”

Father Christy  took advantage of his time here to visit Syracuse and Niagara Falls, fishing on the Black River and at Clayton and Alexandria Bay, and learning how to play golf under the tutelage of Father Vincent Freeh, former pastor of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Church.

“I’m getting better at it,” he said, his ever-present smile broadening.

His new assignment in India has not yet been revealed, he said, but he said a return to the Formation House or serving on a marriage tribunal are possibilities.

Vocations in India are so far going well, he said, “but we can see in families not as many going to church as before. In about 15 years we will be facing in India what you are facing here. And parishioners in India are not as active in their churches as are the people here, he said.