Welcome, Father Perry: St. Joseph’s Church’s New Pastor Wears Many Hats
Father Perry also is Holy Spirit High president.
St. Joseph Catholic Church’s new pastor, Rev. Perry Cherubini – better known as Father Perry – is familiar with leading seasonally shifting congregations by the sea.
Cherubini has served as a priest at the shore for almost three decades, he says after slipping on a blue and white mask featuring hundreds of tiny Spartans. Spartans are the mascots for Holy Spirit High School in Absecon. For, in addition to his pastoral ministry, Cherubini leads Holy Spirit High School as its president. Not only that, the clergyman chairs the Board of Pastors for Bishop McHugh Regional Catholic School in Cape May Court House and serves on the Archdiocese of Camden’s Diocesan College of Consultors and Presbyteral Council.
His time as a priest in South Jersey beachside communities began in 1992 when Cherubini was assigned to be the parochial vicar, a term meaning associate pastor, at St. Bernadette Parish in Northfield. Six years later, he assumed his role as an educator when he joined the faculty at Holy Spirit High. In 2001, Cherubini was named vice principal of Gloucester Catholic High School. While teaching at Holy Spirit and administrating at Gloucester Catholic, Cherubini lived at Blessed Sacrament Parish in Margate in the company of a friend and former educator, Father Lewis Battisti.
St. Joseph’s new pastor continued to assume pastoral and educational leadership roles when he was appointed pastor of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish in Absecon in 2006 and first named president of Holy Spirit High School in 2008. Cherubini plans to serve as Holy Spirit’s president until at least 2022, when the school will celebrate its 100th anniversary.
Regarding similarities or differences found in the numerous parish communities that he called home, Cherubini says that “each place is unique, but all are the same” in that which is “constant and consistent in our church … the Eucharist, the Mass and the other sacraments.” Factors, like proximity to a beach, make each parish unique, the Bridgeton native adds.
“Now it’s time to get to know everyone here” at St. Joseph’s, he says. “I’m just so happy to be here.”
If the upbeat mood among staffers bustling about the Parish Center’s offices is any indication, they are happy to have him there, too.
As for the parishioners and visitors whom the man behind the Spartans mask already has met, he might have to be reintroduced to some of them thanks to COVID-19 pandemic prevention protocols, he admits.
“I’m meeting people’s eyeballs and [hearing] a voice behind a screen!” Cherubini says with exasperation tamed by humor.
Like all of us living under this cloud of coronavirus uncertainty, he is treading new waters as he seeks to find the best ways to safely run a Catholic parish and a high school.
Seeing in-person Mass attendance decline due to the pandemic is a concern. St. Joseph Church seats 1,000 people, with standing room for another 200, Cherubini notes, before adding that in pre-pandemic days, as many as 6,000 people were at Masses on summer weekends. Still, the pastor felt some encouragement in seeing St. Joseph’s filled to pandemic-protocol-capacity at nearly 300 people during one Mass on the weekend of Aug. 9.
The Parish Center’s whiteboard calendar revealing the church’s monthly schedule for August suggested other signs of hope including baptisms and at least one wedding.
Safely opening schools that have been closed since COVID-19 mandated shutdowns went into effect in New Jersey on March 18 present other worries for Father Perry. All Catholic schools in the Diocese of Camden, among them Holy Spirit High School and Bishop McHugh, are scheduled for September reopenings as of this writing. Holy Spirit’s president expresses further concern for the fate of the school’s sports programs as the state weighs mandates to modify high school sports.
A number of Holy Spirit students told Cherubini how much they’ve missed going to school since mandated closings.
“Sometimes you have to lose something to appreciate it,” he muses before expressing a wish for a return to normalcy … a safe normalcy. “I’m an eternal optimist. We’re going to beat this!”
In the meantime, Cherubini manages to make it look easy, leading a parish and a high school, saying daily and Sunday Masses, administering sacraments, serving on boards and councils, meeting with individuals and committees day and night, and more.
In the midst of his busy clerical lifestyle, Cherubini spends quiet time with God in the early hours of the morning, he says. His day begins at 5am and often includes a top-of-the-morning bike ride. Some days, he sees the sun rise over the sea. “That in itself is a prayerful experience,” he says. Like all other priests, Cherubini also prays the Divine Office or Liturgy of the Hours twice a day via morning and evening prayers, he adds.
When asked about the ongoing controversy about saving the original St. Joseph Church building from the wrecking ball, Cherubini says he is “fully aware of the situation.” Like everyone associated with the issue, the pastor awaits the final outcome now that the Archdiocese of Camden has issued a “decree of relegation” deeming that the old St. Joseph Church building is no longer a sacred space, and the petitioners for saving it are taking their cause to the Vatican.
“We’re all in waiting,” Cherubini says of people on every side of the issue.
Still, time flies in the pastor’s office as he prepares to move from one meeting to the next. In parting, Cherubini slips off one side of his mask, smiles warmly and offers cordial goodbyes. One month into the job, St. Joseph’s new pastor cheerfully perseveres.
