Father Joseph Espaillat

Father Joseph A. Espaillat entered the archdiocesan seminary system at the age of 13, when he enrolled in the minor seminary, Cathedral Prep, as a high school freshman.

After graduation, it was four years of college at Fordham University while living at St. John Neumann Seminary Residence, then in Riverdale, for men considering the priesthood. He began studies at St. Joseph's Seminary with a spirituality year the seminary was offering in Northampton, Pa.

Father Espaillat cheerfully acknowledges that his path to the priesthood, once a common one, is unusual in these days of later vocations.

"I'm a rare breed," the 26-year-old said recently. "By the time I'm ordained, I'll have spent half of my life in the seminary." It was that experience, he added, that helped to strengthen his vocation‹especially his junior and senior years at Cathedral Prep, when he boarded at the school after it moved to Rye from his home neighborhood, the upper West Side of Manhattan.

"That really had a big impact on me," he said. "In my Manhattan years, I really wasn't leaning toward the priesthood. But once I moved up to Rye, that was the key change.

"I got to see what a priest does every day," he explained. "I got to see them as normal men who like to play sports, watch television. I got to see the priests without the collar, if you will, and that started me to really think about maybe God might be definitely calling me to do this."

He mentioned the influence of the late Father Salvatore A. LaSala, the rector, and administrators: Msgr. Desmond O'Connor and Fathers Arthur Mastrolia and Edward O'Halloran. At home, he said his paternal grandmother and his mother were most influential in his spiritual formation. Though he went to public schools until entering Cathedral, his mother insisted on his attending Sunday school at their parish, Blessed Sacrament on West 71st Street, even after he received confirmation.

But even as he finished up at Cathedral Prep, he still wasn't 100 percent sure of his vocation until one evening, at prayer in the chapel before the Blessed Sacrament, when he turned his decision over to Our Lady of Altagracia, the patroness of the Dominican Republic.

"I said to her, 'Show me the way'...and I felt a certain peace afterwards," he said.

The son of Joseph and Mercedes Espaillat, immigrants from the Dominican Republic, Father Espaillat was born in Manhattan and spent his early childhood living in the storied Dakota apartment building at Central Park West and 72nd Street, where his father was a resident manager.

Father Espaillat remembers many of the famous residents, including occasional playmate Sean Lennon, the son of John Lennon and Yoko Ono; the conductor Leonard Bernstein, and singer Roberta Flack.

At Dunwoodie, Father Espaillat‹who took three years of opera lessons in high school‹sings in the choir. He taught a confirmation class at Holy Spirit parish and visited the sick at Our Lady of Mercy Medical Center, both in the Bronx, and served on the seminary's retreat team. His summer assignments were at St. Elizabeth's, a largely Dominican parish in Washington Heights.

Looking ahead to ordination, he said, "I just want to be a parish priest, a simple parish priest. I want to be able to help out the Latino community, especially the Dominican community, in any way possible.

"I'm called to serve the universal Church," he added, "so wherever God needs me and guides me, there I will be‹to serve his people."

First Mass: Blessed Sacrament Church, Manhattan, Sunday, May 18, at 3 p.m.

Homilist: Msgr. Gerald Walsh, pastor of St. Elizabeth's in Manhattan and regional vicar of North Manhattan.