By Katie Engesser
Deacon Pedro Angucho’s road to the priesthood was filled with doubts, but as he prepares for his ordination he feels the people from the Brooklyn Diocese have given him confidence to fulfill his vocation.
“I see the presence of God in the people, so that people made me to think ‘yeah, you are going the right way,’” Deacon Pedro said.
His way to God and the priesthood began in Columbia. Though Deacon Pedro is from a small city called La Plata, his family is large. He has ten siblings, and it was one of his brothers who first planted the seed that led to his vocation.
“One of my older brothers, he told me, ‘you should be the priest of the family,’ and he put the idea in my mind,” Deacon Pedro recalled.
Since he was just a kid at the time, he thought nothing more of it until he entered high school and a Monsignor from his parish posed a similar question.
“He asked me, ‘are you a seminarian?,’ and I say ‘no, I’m not,” Deacon Pedro remember, “And once again he says, ‘you look like a seminarian no?’ ‘But I’m not.’ And then he told me, ‘but you’ve been thinking about it.’”
The truth was that Deacon Pedro was thinking about the priesthood, and at the urging of that Monsignor he decided to give the seminary a try. But doubt started to creep in, and he wondered if this really was the path God wanted him to follow. After a year, Deacon Pedro left his studies.
“I was afraid, you know?” Deacon Pedro explained.
For years Deacon Pedro went back and forth with his choice, struggling to answer God’s call but fearing that it wasn’t his true vocation. Then a priest from the Archdiocese of New York invited Deacon Pedro to study in America. He asked his Vocation Director what he should do. His answer was a quote by a popular pope and saint: “‘Do not be afraid,’ like John Paul II always said,” Deacon Pedro explained.
And so Deacon Pedro came to study in America, reconnecting with God and falling in love the Brooklyn Diocese. “Everybody was very kind,” he said of the priests and parishioners.
Now, Deacon Pedro is ready to give back to the community that helped him back on the road to the priesthood, and is looking forward to becoming a spiritual father to the people of the Brooklyn Diocese.
“The day that I get to say my first Mass and put my hands like that- that’s the most exciting to me.”