Name: Chris Gutierrez
Hometown: Los Angeles, Calif.
Stage of formation: Novice

Speaking without a trace of a Spanish accent, Christopher Gutierrez says he is still a bit unsure of English usage since it has been many years since he has used English exclusively. An American citizen, he left his parents’ home in California when he was nine following their divorce and moved to his grandparents’ ranch in Mexico outside Yahualica, Jalisco.

Although Chris, now 29, returned to California to attend middle school, his call to priesthood led him back to seminary in Mexico. “I started to think about priesthood as a child, but I didn’t know any priests in the United States,” Chris says. “All the priests I knew were in Mexico.” So it was logical for him to return to Mexico to begin his journey to ordination.

After some seminary training in Mexico, Chris is now pursuing a vocation as a Glenmary missioner. With three other men, he is living in Maple Mount, Ky., where he began his novitiate year in July.

His path to Glenmary began quite accidentally. Chris was attending seminary in San Juan de los Lagos in Jalisco, Mexico, when he met Glenmary vocation director Father Steve Pawelk. Father Steve was visiting a friend of Chris’s who was discerning joining Glenmary. “I had never heard of Glenmary before that meeting,” Chris says. But he had been thinking about life as a missionary in the United States.

His desire to serve in mission areas of the United States and his meeting Father Steve eventually brought him to Glenmary. He is attracted to Glenmary’s ministry to the poor and neglected, particularly to immigrant families in rural areas. “I could work in Chicago or New York,” he says. “And I still have family in Los Angeles, so I could work there. But Glenmary targets places where there aren’t a lot of people who speak both Spanish and English. I see a need.”

During his prenovitiate year in Hartford, Ky., which has a large Spanish-speaking population, Chris discovered that nearly 50 percent of the Hispanic community did not come to Mass, although liturgy is celebrated in Spanish at a Saturday night liturgy at the nearby former Glenmary mission, Holy Redeemer. Most have been baptized, he says. Chris wants to visit them in their homes to learn of their needs and invite them to come to church.

And there is was a need for his bilingual abilities in Hartford where he was often called on to serve as a Spanish translator at the hospital. One night he also received a call to help translate for a woman who needed some items from the drug store. Although he still thinks, prays and even dreams in Spanish, he had a difficult time communicating with the woman whose first language was a Guatemalan dialect with which he is unfamiliar.

"Working with and serving he Spanish-speaking community in Hartford gave life and growth to the meaning of my call to be a missioner in the United States," Chris says.

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