By Christine Persichette
Michael Carestia has been walking the hallways at St. Bernadette Catholic Academy for decades.
“It’s like still walking through the halls and saying, ‘Oh God I’m 59 years old and I’m still here.’ But thank God I’m still here and like I said to help out in the church, anything I can do,” Carestia said.
But that wasn’t the case back in the day, when he wore a school uniform.
“I couldn’t wait to leave,” he said. “I was always in trouble. My older brother was an angel and every time when I got in here it was like, ‘You’re Chris’ brother? Can’t be.’ I was always in the principal’s office, the ruler, and so on.”
These days there are no more rulers, just tape measures and drills.
Carestia is the facilities manager at the Shrine Church of St. Bernadette and its school in Dyker Heights. He says he’s come full circle. Now when he gets called to the principal’s office, it’s not for detention.
“Most of the time it’s like being on the fire department. You never know when someone’s going to call like, ‘Oh Mike something broke upstairs, or Mike the toilet’s broken, a kid threw up, the chair broke, the desk broke.’’ Or Father Jeremy will call me, ‘Mike there’s something wrong with the sink in the church, the rectory, or the convent.’ Always something, there’s always something going on,” he said.
But whatever it is, the pastor, Fr. Jeremy Canna says he can always count on Carestia to check it out and fix it.
“He treats it, as far as our church is concerned, as if it’s his own house,” said Fr. Canna. “The way he would want his house to be in order, is the same way he wants this Shrine Church and our neighboring academy to be as best they can be.”
Carestia didn’t just go to school at St. Bernadette: he was baptized there, got married there and even walked his daughter down the aisle there.
“I don’t know if you want to call it a Brooklyn thing,” he told Currents News. “You’re here, your roots are here.”
And even though he jokes about being back at St. Bernadette, Carestie says he knows this is where God wants him to be and he plans to stay.
“Oh yeah, oh yeah I’m doing my penance, without a doubt,” he said jokingly of his experience. “I always make a joke: You’re wheeled in at baptism and you’re wheeled out at the end.’ Hopefully, I’ll come back at the end because it means so much to me the church and my family here.”,
And now you know Michael Carestia from St. Bernadette and how he makes up the pulse of the parish.