Rome Newsroom, Aug 26, 2024 / 13:34 pm (CNA).
The first Indonesian American to be ordained a Catholic priest in the United States is excited for Pope Francis’ visit to his native country, where, he says, “the faith is so alive.”
Father Miguel Marie, a Franciscan Missionary of the Eternal Word, was born in West Java, Indonesia, and emigrated to northern California with his family at the age of 12.
The Franciscan friar celebrated the 20th anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood this year, which was a historic first for the 129,000-strong Indonesian American diaspora in the U.S.
The priest, who currently serves at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville, Alabama, highlighted the significance of the pope’s trip in light of the fact that Indonesia is the most populated Muslim country in the world.
While the country’s population is 87% Muslim, more than 29 million Christians live in Indonesia. Pew Research Center found Indonesians to be among the most religious people in the world in its 2019 report called “The Global God Divide.”
“These people are really practicing their faith,” Father Miguel said. It is not uncommon to find churches are full on Sundays in Indonesia, where the Mass attendance rate is higher than in many European countries.
“For the pope to go there, I think that it will really strengthen them in continuing to try to live their faith,” he added.
Father Miguel’s journey
Father Miguel grew up in Bogor, a city about 40 miles south of the capital Jakarta, where Pope Francis will visit Sept. 3–6.
At the time, Indonesia was under the military dictatorship of Suharto, whose New Order regime (1966–1998) was marked by violence and discrimination against the ethnically Chinese Indonesian population.
“In our family, all of us were born in Indonesia, but we have a Chinese background,” Father Miguel said.
“When we were living there … Chinese Indonesians were often looked at negatively. … The racist issue got to the point where my dad was concerned about the family, especially us kids.”
His parents, who had converted to Catholicism, made the decision to emigrate to the United States. The family arrived in California in August 1981, one week before Mother Angelica began the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) in Alabama, where Father Miguel would later discover his vocation.
After moving to northern California, the biggest challenge Miguel faced was learning English at the age of 12, but once he overcame that hurdle, he thrived. He went on to attend the DeVry Institute of Technology in Phoenix and received a bachelor of science degree in computer information systems.
While working as a systems engineer for Electronic Data Systems in San Francisco, he began going to daily Mass. After attending World Youth Day in Denver in 1993, it became clear to him that he had a vocation to the Catholic priesthood.
At the encouragement of his spiritual director, he checked out Mother Angelica’s Franciscan community. During his visit to Alabama, he sat in on some of EWTN’s filming and was so touched by the live interviews he witnessed that he applied to enter the community at the end of the week.
He entered the Franciscan Missionaries of the Eternal Word in 1996 and made his first profession two years later, taking the religious name of Father Miguel in honor of Blessed Miguel Pro. He was ordained to the priesthood on June 5, 2004.
Father Miguel had no idea that he was the first Indonesian to be ordained in the U.S. until years afterward when a seminarian from Los Angeles reached out to invite the friar to his diocesan ordination in L.A. as the third Indonesian priest to be ordained in the U.S., explaining that he found out who was the first from the USCCB statistics.
Reflecting back on his 20 years of priesthood, Father Miguel remembers that it was not always easy.
“But God’s grace carried me through,” he said.
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Indonesians are God-loving people. Out there Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists – they all live in peace and harmony.