St. George Church bids farewell to Father Salvador

Will retire July 5 but says he’s not going far

Posted 6/21/17

The Reverend Stephen B. Salvador, pastor of St. George Parish, Westport, will retire July 5 some 43 years after becoming a priest.

Parishioners will get a chance to say their farewells the Sunday …

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St. George Church bids farewell to Father Salvador

Will retire July 5 but says he’s not going far

Posted

The Reverend Stephen B. Salvador, pastor of St. George Parish, Westport, will retire July 5 some 43 years after becoming a priest.

Parishioners will get a chance to say their farewells the Sunday before, June 25, when he will preside over a Mass of Thanksgiving at 12:30 p.m. followed by a picnic and family outing with games for the youngsters at St. George School on Route 177.

“I said I had only two conditions when they let me know they wanted to do this,” Father Salvador said. “There should be no charge and no gifts.”

The time is for retirement is right, he said — “You tend to know.”

Father Salvador turned 70 on May 30 — 70 is retirement age in the diocese, 75 is mandatory retirement.

After that last service, he won’t be traveling far.

“I am a native of Padanaram and I’ll be moving back to the family homestead” where he will live close by his two sisters.

St. George Church, where he has been pastor for the past three years, and Westport itself have been a joy to serve, he said.

“This parish is a gift of God … the people, the country, living in a country setting, these are just honest people.”

He said with a laugh that he liked to complain that he had to walk all the way from his residence to Dartmouth to say Mass — the church property straddles the town line.

Father Salvador said he relishes almost every part of the job, with the possible exception of administrative chores.

“I enjoy baptisms, I enjoy celebrating the Eucharist, I love high-fiving the youngsters and talking to families after Mass — we have so many young families here … it keeps you young.

“Even funerals. You get the opportunity to reach out to families at a difficult time and hopefully do some healing.”

St. George Church, he said, “is a most welcoming community. I felt that from the first and others who come here for the first time, or maybe have been away awhile, say the same thing.”

He expects he will have little problem filling retirement time.

The church sees to that in part and has already been handing him “fill-in” assignments — the first comes the Sunday after his retirement.

He expects some of those will be at St. George Church, in support of his successor, Father David Frederici.

“It’s what we do.”

He will also continue his long involvement with Scouting for which he has served as a local, regional and national leader — he was national chaplain for the National Catholic Committee on Scouting.

Sore knees willing, he hopes to play some golf and plenty of gardening.

“And swimming — I’ve always loved swimming.”

A long -time member of Anthony’s Beach in Dartmouth, he said he has always taken pride in being one of the first to take a salt water swim in the spring, and the last in the fall.

“When I was little, we used to laugh at the old-timers who would do that. Now I’m one of them … My long-time friend Chris Hayward and I are usually the last to go in in October.

Ordained in 1974

The son of the late Seraphim and Agnes (Borges) Salvador, Father Salvador was born and raised in New Bedford with two sisters. He attended the city’s T.R. Rodman School and is a 1966 graduate of New Bedford High School. After high school, he entered St. Mary’s College Seminary in St. Mary, Kentucky, to study for the priesthood and finished his preparation at St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore.

He was ordained a priest by Bishop Daniel A. Cronin on May 11, 1974, in St. Mary’s Cathedral, Fall River.

He began his priestly ministry as a parochial vicar at St. John the Evangelist Parish, Attleboro, and went on to serve in the same capacity at St. John of God Parish, Somerset, and St. Anthony of Padua Parish, Fall River.

From 1986 to 1993, he was assigned to hospital ministry as a chaplain at St. Luke’s Hospital in New Bedford.

He was named to his first pastorate at Holy Ghost Parish in Attleboro in 1993 where he remained for seven years before becoming pastor of Saints Peter and Paul Parish in Fall River.

In 2014, he began his current post as pastor of St. George's in Westport.

For almost all of his priesthood, Father Salvador has been involved in Scouting. In 1977, he became chaplain to and board member of the Moby Dick Boy Scout Council and of the Plymouth Bay Girl Scout Council and then went on to establish a unified Catholic Committee on Scouting in the diocese.

Through the years, he served as chaplain to the Diocesan Committee on Scouting, as the New England region chaplain for the National Catholic Committee on Scouting (NCCS), and as an advisor to the NCCS. (The NCCS facilitates the inclusion of the Boy Scouts of America program in dioceses and parishes across the country as a form of youth ministry.)

In 2006, he was appointed national chaplain to the NCCS, which required his service in three successive leadership posts over a nine-year period. He carried out those responsibilities while continuing in parish ministries.

 

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