May 5, 1968. Protests in France sparked street battles in Paris
between students and army troops. Communist units initiated Phase II of the Tet
Offensive, attacking 119 targets in South Vietnam, including the capital Saigon.
Bobby Goldboro’s Honey was Number 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 record chart. And at
Our Lady of the Annunciation Cathedral in West Roxbury, Mass., Bishop Justin
Najmy ordained 25-year-old Deacon Joseph Francavilla as a priest in the Melkite
Greek Catholic Church. As Father Francavilla put on his vestments for the first
time as a priest, the congregation chanted again and again: “Axios” — Greek for “He is worthy.”
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Melkite Fr. Joseph Francavilla celebrates 50 years as a priest. PHIL BATTEY | COURTESY
“It was a beautiful spring day in Boston, and you don’t get many
of those there,” recalled Father Francavilla, who will celebrate his 50th
anniversary as a priest next month. “I would spend the next four years
assisting at Annunciation Cathedral and then come to Washington as pastor of
the newly established Holy Transfiguration Church in McLean.” He has served at Holy Transfiguration, one of
five Eastern Catholic parishes in the Washington area, for the past 47 years.
However, his being named pastor of Holy Transfiguration was not a
happy occasion for Father Francavilla. He came to McLean to bury his friend and
predecessor, the parish’s first pastor, Father Armond J. Jacopin, who had died
suddenly.
The fledging parish had 30 families on its rolls and fewer than
100 people.
“The first years, I was the only clergy — no deacon, no reader,” said
Father Francavilla. “To hold services, we had bought a former Methodist meeting
house down Route 7 that had been built before the Civil War. But only nine
years later we were able to build the beautiful temple we have at 8501
Lewinsville Rd., which has a hall and, now, an education wing.”
Today, Father Ephrem Handal serves as a parish priest with Father
Francavilla, along with four deacons, a subdeacon, seven readers and two
seminarians. The parish rolls list about 400 families and on a typical Sunday
hundreds of faithful attend the one Divine Liturgy that is served.
“I am fortunate to have been able to baptize the children, and in
some cases, the grandchildren of parishioners whom I, as a young priest,
baptized as infants and to have seen our parish family grow beyond expectation,”
Father Francavilla said. “People come to us attracted by what we offer: a faith
community, the beauty of Byzantine worship, a vision of the holiness of life,
the mystery of God beyond human kind, an entry into the transcendent.”
When the catechists at Holy Transfiguration prepare adults for
baptism they stress that the Eastern Catholic Church is scriptural, doctrinal,
liturgical, mystical, experiential and particular, the last meaning that the
church they belong to is local. The scriptural, doctrinal, liturgical,
mystical, and experiential streams flow together, as seen clearly in the Divine
Liturgy, which on Sundays and Holy Days typically lasts about 75 minutes.
“The Divine Liturgy appeals to all the senses,” said Father Francavilla,
“and in the Eastern Church, the virtue of knowledge rests on the foundation of
the senses, along with the mind and the revelation of God. The Divine Liturgy
is a sensuous experience in the best meaning of the term. Clouds of
sweet-smelling incense rise as our prayers rise to God. Byzantine vestments and
icons in the church appeal to the eye, as well as express doctrine in visual
form. We hear the word of God in our prayers, our hymns, our readings from the
epistles and the Gospels, and in the homily. Holy Eucharist involves our sense
of taste. Through the senses, we experience the Divine Presence and, if only
briefly, paradise. When we pray, we pray body, mind and soul.”
Father Francavilla also noted that, during Lent, Holy
Transfiguration holds services every day, “because we see Lent not as
deprivation but as joyful fulfillment, marveling in wonder at what our baptism
has wrought.”
The Melkite Greek Catholic Church is one of 23 Eastern Catholic Churches
sui iuris (self-governing) that are in full
communion with the Holy See. Its origin is in the Middle East generally and in
the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch in particular, from which it sprang in
1724. With the Arab diaspora in the 19th and 20th centuries, the Melkite Church
has spread to Europe, North and South America, South Africa, Australia and New
Zealand. Worldwide, it has approximately 1.6 million members among the total of
approximately 16 million Eastern Catholics.
Pope Francis has been extraordinarily supportive of the Eastern
Catholic Churches, as a bishop in Argentina and as pontiff. Some observers have
attributed that support to the influence of Father Stefan Czmil, a Ukrainian
Salesian missionary in Argentina. A young Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who attended
Salesian College, would often rise early to assist Father Stefan at Mass.
The four other Eastern Catholic churches in the Washington area
are: Epiphany of Our Lord, a Byzantine
Ruthenian Catholic parish in Annandale; Kidane-Mehret Ge’ez Rite Catholic
Church, an Ethiopian Catholic parish in Washington; Our Lady of Lebanon
Maronite Church, another Catholic Church originating in the Middle East, in Washington;
and the Ukrainian Catholic National Shrine of the Holy Family near The Catholic
University of America in Washington.
Father Francavilla knows the Catholic U. neighborhood well having
been a seminarian at the university in the 1960s. It was there that he met
Bishop Najmy, when His Excellency visited.
A native of Buffalo, N.Y., Father Francavilla was raised in an
Italian Catholic household.
“When I was 8 years old,” Father Francavilla remembered, “my grandfather
took me to Midnight Mass for the first time at Christmas. I can still remember
holding his hand as we walked to church through the cold, dark streets. Then
the door of the church opened and I was flooded by the light, the smell of
incense, the glowing candles, the music — it was my first experience of being
overwhelmed by Holy Mystery. It spoke to my heart and I have never lost the
vision.”
Battey is a parishioner of Holy Transfiguration Church in
McLean.