Staff photo by EMILY BARNES
The Rev. Alain Colliou is the pastor of Our Lady Help of Christians Catholic Church in Waldorf. Colliou is originally from France.
Can faith be the glue that binds people from diverse backgrounds together?
Two local Catholic priests are living proof.
The Rev. Alain Colliou is the pastor of Our Lady Help of Christians Church in Waldorf. A native of France, Colliou has lived in the United States since the 1970s.
Growing up in the southwest of the country, an hour from the famed Catholic pilgrimage site of Lourdes, France, Colliou said he first was inspired to answer God’s call when he was 12.
“I went to a Catholic school, and we had a retreat where we actually went to Lourdes, and I recall one of the priests saying, ‘Mary loves you. Mary will always protect you,’” Colliou said. “With that sentence, I thought that if Mary will always love me and protect me, then I could do anything.”
With that, Colliou said he recognized his vocation, although it still would be some time before he acted upon the call. After spending a summer working in Cameroon when he was 20, Colliou returned to France, where he earned a degree in engineering and economics.
Shortly thereafter, he was hired by the World Bank, which he described as “a vocation, in a sense.”
Colliou remained with the World Bank for 35 years, traveling around the world and living for a time in Bangladesh with his son and now-deceased wife, although their home was in Bethesda.
It was during his time in Bethesda that Colliou said the call to the consecrated life became apparent once again.
“I think the final step was when Cardinal [Theodore] McCarrick came to my parish, Our Lady of Mercy in Potomac, to talk about vocations,” Colliou said. “I was not so young anymore, but that reminded me of my earlier vocation, and so part of me said, ‘Well, if God calls, you should say yes, and you shouldn’t say no, but maybe.’ That maybe hit me and the next day I saw ... that they were advertising for permanent deacons, so I went and applied.”
Although Catholic doctrine dictates that a married man cannot be a priest, Colliou served as a permanent deacon for some time up until the death of his wife seven years ago. At this point, Colliou said, he was inspired to make his move into the priesthood.
Colliou entered the seminary at Blessed John XXIII National Seminary in Weston, Mass., in 2005. John XXIII is designated for those a bit older who wish to enter the priesthood, and Colliou described his time there as “an amazing experience of growth and learning.”
The self-described “baby priest” was ordained in June 2009. He also served at St. Peter’s Church in Waldorf while still a seminarian and returned there as parochial vicar for a time following his ordination.
Colliou has been at Our Lady Help of Christians since September 2010.
The lifelong vocation
The Rev. Zygmunt Kurzawinski of St. Peter’s Church in Waldorf was born and raised in Warsaw, Poland.
Unlike Colliou, he does not recognize one specific event in his life that prompted him to want to become a priest. Instead, Kurzawinski identifies the parish community as what drew him toward the consecrated life.
“When I entered the small parish community, I was very moved by the intensity of the Catholic life, of the prayer life, and all the families who love the Lord and are dedicated to Him,” Kurzawinski said.
“It really drew me much closer to my faith, as opposed to just being a Sunday Catholic and not really involved in my faith. That allowed me to get to know my faith better and experience the love of God and God’s guidance in my life, and in response to that, I answered the call of the Lord and ended up being a seminarian and then a priest.”
Kurzawinski moved to the United States in 1994, when he entered Redemptoris Mater seminary in Newark, N.J.
Following his ordination in 2003, Kurzawinski served at a variety of parishes, including Holy Redeemer in Kensington and Immaculate Heart of Mary in Lexington Park, and he even served as a missionary for a year in Fairbanks, Alaska, an experience he described as “very good, but very cold.”
While in Fairbanks, Kurzawinski, along with another priest, was assigned to a small parish in downtown Fairbanks with a congregation of 400 to 500 people on any given Sunday.
“It held a variety of different pastoral challenges that we don’t see here in the Archdiocese of Washington,” Kurzawinski said.
Kurzawinski came to St. Peter’s at the end of October 2011, and said he still is making his “debut” there.
Foreign land, new challenges
For both Colliou and Kurzawinski, living in the United States has been a growth experience but not necessarily one riddled with adversity. However, both recognize that with the process of adaptation to a new culture, there is always bound to be a specific set of challenges.
Colliou said he was intrigued and pleasantly surprised by the term “international priest.”
“For me, I think I like the term ‘international priest’ a bit more than ‘foreign-born,’ which is what we usually hear,” Colliou said. “A priest with international experience brings not only the ability to help people from a particular culture integrate into a parish, but they can also ... open their hearts. And the Catholic church is universal.”
Both parishes offer services to minister to their international communities. At St. Peter’s, Kurzawinski is the head of the Hispanic outreach program. St. Peter’s has held Spanish language services for the past 30 years.
Kurzawinski, who speaks Spanish, Italian and Russian aside from English and his native Polish, said he is able to see the fruits of his faith in action through the program.
“I found that connecting to the Hispanic community, both in my former parishes and here as well, is something that makes me feel at home,” he said. “Despite coming from Europe, and them from all different backgrounds, the spirit of the Lord unites us.”
At Our Lady Help of Christians, the cultural outreach services might be a bit newer but are nonetheless key to uniting the people in the congregation.
The church began a Spanish-language service at 7 p.m. every Sunday following the start of the new year, and Colliou said the church also has a Spanish language prayer group on Tuesday nights. There also soon will be conversation classes offered.
“It’s not to teach the language like professors, but just to have a conversation,” Colliou said. “Some of our parishioners speak very limited English, and having a conversation could help them improve slowly.”
Monsignor Bill Parent, pastor of St. Peter’s, said both priests have proven to be very adept at adjusting to international culture.
“Father Zygmunt got through the Christmas rush with us, and he’s done very well,” Parent said. “One question monolingual parishioners always have is ‘will we be able to understand him?’ and Father Zygmunt has a remarkable command of English.”
Parent attributed the success of the perspective Kurzawinski brings to the international nature of the Neocatechumenal Way.
“The Neocatechumenal Way is international within the Catholic church, and has a strong Spanish component,” Parent said. “This is very influential to him, and I think allows him to understand the multicultural perspective.”
Similarly, Parent said he feels Colliou also has done exceptionally well in the American culture.
“We still miss him here at St. Peter’s, even though he’s right down the road,” Parent said. “It might take a bit more to keep up with him, but he’s a delight.”
Colliou and Kurzawinski feel that the international priest community in the Archdiocese of Washington has a bit of an advantage simply because the area itself is so diverse.
“The interesting thing is that it’s such a mix of cultures here,” Kurzawinski said. “We have a growing Hispanic population ... Africans, and Asians, and all the other different cultures represented, but what unites us is the faith ... all of us have, at one point or another, the same struggles, with accepting the other person, with loving the other person ... all of us face challenges in life.”
Colliou added, “There’s been an internationalization of the people in the pews, and not just in Waldorf.”
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