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NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF FILIPINO PRIESTS
Serving the church of the United States of America
Serving the church of the United States of America
Rev. Arlon M. Vergara
OSA - Parochial Vicar at St. Isidore in Yuba City By Joseph Pimentel / AJPRESS
WHEN Father Arlon Vergara was assigned to the Diocese of Sacramento, he felt it was a “sign.” The name Sacramento is a derivative of Sacrament. And for any priest, that is a sign in and of itself. Father Vergara is the parochial vicar at St. Isidore in Yuba City, CA, a small town about 40 miles North of Sacramento. “I have come to serve and to fulfill the solemn mandate of the Lord, ‘Go, and preach the Gospel,’” he said on the Parish website. “I am sent as a missionary: sent to proclaim, sent to heal, sent to teach, sent to sanctify, sent to serve, and sent to bring hope. There is no boundary, there is no limit, and there is no difference in culture or race or color, for we are all brothers and sisters in the Lord.” Vergara is a worldly priest, who has served all over, and comes from a religious family. Born and raised in Magallanes, Sorsogon, Philippines, Vergara is part of a large family with eight siblings. His eldest brother is also a priest assigned in Manila. Vergara credits their grandmother, who relentlessly shared to us her gifts of intense prayer and biblical story-telling,” for passing on the strong religious catholic faith in their family. “With my family’s religious experience, I have allowed myself to commune with God in prayers and generously responded to God in the ministerial priesthood,” he said. He studied and finished Philosophy, Sacred Theology and received a Masters in Theology at the Ecclesiastical Faculty of the University of Santo Tomas, Manila. He was ordained as a priest for the Order of St. Augustine, Province of Santo Nino de Cebu, Philippines on Dec. 7, 1990, according to his bio. One of his first assignments was a mission to serve in Korea. 76 The National Association of Filipino Priests (U.S.A)
For more than ten years, starting in 1993, Vergara served in the Diocese of Inchon as pastor of St. Therese Parish until being called back to the Philippines in 2004. After serving in Korea, he taught teach in a seminary in the Philippines and established a new Augustinian mission parish in the southern part of Luzon, in Bagacay, Gubat, Sorsogon. He said within three years, “through the help of God, I was able to pioneer a parish with almost 10,000 parishioners. Most of the parishioners were below the poverty line. “As a pastor of that parish, I initiated some simple ways to answer their needs and to uplift their living standards a bit. I introduced a weekly feeding program for undernourished children and livelihood programs for indigent families. I was grateful that I was somehow able to help them through the kindness and generosity of heart of some people whom I had been blessed to meet and know.” Father Vergara then went on to serve on another foreign mission, this time to the United States. Upon serving at his current parish in Yuba City, he was initially stationed in Richmond, Virginia where in his time there, he served in the Church of Transfiguration in Fincastle, St. John the Evangelist in Newcastle, Parish of St. Bede in Williamsburg, St. Matthew Parish in Virginia Beach and then became a pastor in Sacred Heart in Covington. His message to parishioners: “We must be true and faithful to our Christian vocation. We are all called to build a community of disciples of Jesus Christ in this modern era, living with one heart and mind intent upon God. Let us all together share the love of Christ and be a witness to others that through us they may discover that Jesus is real and is truly risen and alive.”