Bishop Checchio installs Father Deniskingsley Nwagwu as pastor

Vocationist Father Deniskingsley Nwagwu’s journey to the pastorate of St. Cecilia Church, Iselin, began in his native Nigeria where he was ordained in 2008 and took him through Vermont before he came to New Jersey.

He had been administrator of St. Cecelia’s for 3 ½ years before his March 9 installation as pastor; Metuchen Bishop James Checchio was joined for the celebration by about 18 priests from Father Nwagwu’s religious order, the Society of Divine Vocations; the Diocese of Metuchen; the Archdiocese of Newark; the Diocese of Burlington, Vermont, and from North Carolina.

“Let me not be too prideful, but I felt a sense of pride and support,” Father Nwagwu said. “I felt encouraged. I felt brotherhood. I felt a bond.”

Friends came from Vermont too. “I couldn’t have been more happy. I couldn’t have been more grateful,” he said. “I felt like a king.”

Father Nwagwu was a high school English teacher in Nigeria and was considering medical school when he was invited to apply to the Society of Divine Vocations when he visited the vocation director with a friend; after several months decided to apply and was accepted.

After his ordination in Nigeria, he was transferred to the United States, and “leaving home is never an easy thing to do,” he said. “You’re thrown into a new country with a new set of people, new food, a new language — all that.”

He still has friends and a cherished large extended family in Nigeria.

St. Cecilia Parish has about 1,000 registered families, and Father Nwagwu brings to his pastorate there a willingness to consult with others and to keep learning. “When you are being trained in the seminary, nobody can tell you what you are going to see” in parish life, he explained. “So you keep learning every day on the job.”

Though his main strength as a pastor has been the celebration of the sacraments, Father Nwagwu also successfully navigated the parish through the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a stressful time, and the parish came back to life “little by little” under his guidance and with the help of many parishioners. They even planned and executed a year-long 100th anniversary celebration that concluded last year. “With the support of the parish, we did well,” he said.

The pastor does his job to the best of his ability, he noted, and does not compare himself to anyone else. “I look to God for strength and ask questions and do a lot of consulting.”

Father Nwagwu enjoys living in community with three other Vocationist priests at St. James rectory in Woodbridge; he prefers that to living alone. “We have time to sit together and pray, to eat and to share recreation,” he said. “I love living in community, maybe because I was brought up that way,” added the priest who has more than 40 nieces, nephews, grandnieces and grandnephews.

He considers himself a missionary priest, helping dioceses where the number of active clergy has declined, especially in Vermont. “The worst thing that can happen in Vermont is it snows and you have to go somewhere to say Mass,” more than 20 miles away, he said.

Now that he is pastor in Iselin, Father Nwagwu would like to begin a capital campaign with an eye on replacing the more than 35-year-old church roof.

The Society of Divine Vocations was founded by Blessed Justin Maria Russolillo in Italy in 1920.

The Vocationist Fathers’ main charism is identifying and fostering vocations to the priesthood and religious life, especially among the less privileged.

The Vocationist Fathers first arrived in the United States in 1962. In 2017, it became a quasi province with 12 parishes in four East Coast states. The Father Justin Vocationary in Florham Park is the spiritual house of the quasi province.

For more information on the Vocationists, go to Vocationistfathers.org.