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Catholic San Francisco spoke with Deacon Ian Quito and Deacon Benjamin Rosado, who will become the newest priests of the archdiocese when they are ordained August 1 at 10 a.m. at St. Mary's Cathedral. For their first parish assignments, Archbishop Cordileone has appointed Deacon Quito to Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish, Redwood City and Deacon Rosado to St. Matthew Parish, San Mateo.
July 8, 2020
Nicholas Wolfram SmithDeacon Benjamin Rosado: Hearing the 'still, small voice' of call to serve
For Daly City native Deacon Benjamin Rosado, hearing God’s call to priesthood in 2005 came as a surprise. A parishioner at St. Thomas More in San Francisco, he was studying international business at Skyline College in San Bruno and unsure what to do with his life when he first felt God inviting him to consider priesthood.
“I heard a still, small voice in my heart and it was God inviting me, asking if I would be willing to be a priest. And that came out of nowhere. The idea of priesthood really wasn’t on my radar,” he said.
Discerning priesthood changed the direction of his life, Deacon Rosado said. He contacted the archdiocesan vocations office to discover the next steps to start priestly formation, and while it would be years before he entered seminary, he felt reassured he was on the right path to answer God’s call.
Deacon Rosado credited two priests in particular with helping him discern his vocation, his spiritual director, Contemplative of St. Joseph Father Vito Perrone, and his pastor at St. Thomas More, Msgr. Labib Kobti, who one day unexpectedly told him he would make a good priest. Moments like that were helpful, he said, because the interior call he felt was mirrored by others who were encouraging him to pursue the same thing.
Deacon Rosado said reading and studying the Bible daily had been important in developing his faith, because it “helped me to get to know who God was and what he was calling us to,” he said.
Eucharistic adoration has also been an integral part of his spiritual life, helping him to learn to listen to God and “sit and enjoy his holy presence and become familiar with that peace that comes from him, that love he wants to pour out on us.”Deacon Rosado said he looks forward to serving as a priest at St. Matthew Parish in San Mateo, where he has been assigned, and hopes to model servant leadership in his pastoral work.
“I see the people of the church as God’s own children, and he’s chosen me and other priests to serve them, to walk with them, and thanks be to God, to give them these very powerful moments of grace, the sacraments and prayer.”
Deacon Ian Quito: Presence and accompaniment at heart of ministry
Deacon Ian Quito said he remembers clearly the first time he felt drawn to the priesthood. Growing up in Pampanga, Philippines, he was a teenager when he was struck at a school Mass by the homily a priest gave.
“I could not remember the content of the homily, but I was struck by how he delivered it very beautifully, and the way he celebrated Mass.” The reverence and love for the Mass he saw there led him to desire priesthood as well, he said.Deacon Quito entered seminary in the Philippines in 2009, but had to interrupt his studies when his family immigrated to the United States in 2014. He entered St. Patrick’s Seminary as a first-year theology seminarian.
Being a priest can be summed up in one word as “presence,” he said. Priesthood means “being present to God totally and being present to his people, just like Jesus is really present in the Eucharist,” he said.
Deacon Quito said that as a priest he hopes to put a lot of time into hearing confessions. Confession is where people confess their sins, he said, but is also a ministry of encounter where one hears the situations and experiences of other people.
“That’s what I want to do in my priesthood, really be present and listen to people's situations, experiences, problems and sins, and be there for them in accompaniment,” he said.
He also looks forward to learning more about his parishioners at Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Redwood City, where he has been assigned. “I would love to know who they are, their names, their families, their situations, and accompanying them so that they may be able to encounter God amid troubles and difficulties and joys and triumphs in their lives.”
Deacon Quito said the coronavirus lockdown, which prematurely closed off his final year at St. Patrick’s, had brought about a lot of uncertainty and anxiety, but had also been an important lesson for his priesthood on depending on God. “I realized at the end of the day, amid these ambiguities, what remains, or who remains, is really God himself,” he said.
“The God who called me when I was young, that same voice is still calling me until this very moment.”