CHARLOTTE — Father Julio Domínguez has been appointed vicar of Hispanic Ministry for the Diocese of Charlotte, Bishop Peter Jugis has announced.
Father Domínguez succeeds Father Fidel Melo, who has been granted a sabbatical for a year to participate in a Purépecha language and culture immersion in the Archdiocese of Morelia in Michoacán, Mexico, in order to minister to the Purépecha immigrant community here in the diocese.
Father Domínguez’s appointment was effective Feb. 1.
The new role caps more than 16 years of ministry in the diocese for Father Domínguez, who was ordained for the diocese in 2003.
A native of Tamaulipas state, Mexico, Father Domínguez knew he wanted to be a priest since he was 8 years old, he says. Yet like many young people as they grow up, he left the Church for a time in his teenage years and had doubts about his faith. But a conversation with his mother, Esperanza Prieto, impelled him to return to his faith when he was in high school.
He recalls his mother telling him, “Look, César (that is what his mother calls him), I’m just going to tell you something. I already showed you the way of God and you had taken it very well, but you left it. I just want you to know that there is a heaven and a hell, and you are on the road to hell. It depends on you, I already gave you the basis, and you are going to take the path you want.”
He began to take a more active role in the Church after a missionary priest urged him to receive training to become a catechist. What he learned about his faith, he says, filled his heart.
“The missionaries explained everything so well that it made sense,” he says.
He left his secular studies and a girlfriend at the time, and enrolled at the Religious House of the Missionaries of Christ Mediator. He remained in religious life for the next 10 years, but he felt God was calling him to work more closely with people at a parish, in a community.
While studying his third year of philosophy and theology in Rome, he made plans to enter the diocesan priesthood in Jalisco, Mexico. But before returning home to Mexico from Rome, he stopped over in Gastonia to visit relatives.
That visit to Gastonia changed his life, he says. There he met Father John Allen, who at the time was pastor of St. Michael Church there. Father Allen encouraged him to consider studying for the priesthood for the Charlotte diocese. He had doubts about leaving his home and family in Mexico and he wondered about the challenges of learning a new language and serving in an unfamiliar area, he recalls, but his mother encouraged him again to follow God’s will.
“God does not work by chance,” she told him.
After his ordination, Father Domínguez served at Sacred Heart Parish in Salisbury, where his mentor was Father John Putnam, formerly pastor there. He then served at St. Aloysius Church in Hickory, and for the past seven years he has served as pastor of St. Francis of Assisi Church in Lenoir.
His secondary assignments have included serving on the Presbyteral Council, overseeing the Hispanic Track of the annual Diocese of Charlotte Eucharistic Congress, serving on the diocesan vocations team and, most recently, serving as Hispanic Ministry coordinator for the Smoky Mountains Vicariate.
— César Hurtado, Catholic News Herald