Bishop-elect Chau reflects on his journey to God and the priesthood
When he is ordained as an Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Newark on September 8, Bishop-elect Pedro Bismarck Chau will become the first Nicaraguan-born bishop in the United States.
The path that brought him to this point is far from simple. As a teenager, it led him from Central America to the United States and from there — after many years spent working in the secular world and searching for purpose in his life — to the priesthood.
Rooted in faith and family
Born on June 28, 1967, in Managua, Nicaragua, Bishop-designate Chau credits his mother, Amanda, with “instilling her faith in me.”
“She was a single mother who raised seven of us,” he explained to Jersey Catholic. “My dad was in and out, but I always saw my mom praying the Rosary. She would invite the younger ones to pray with her as a family. And I remember going with my mom to Holy Hours every Thursday. That was the tradition back then.”
As a boy, he felt a great desire to receive the Eucharist. “When the time came, I really wanted to receive First Communion. I was the one who registered myself, not even my mom!”
As the youngest child, Bismarck came to understand the importance of taking responsibility for his family. When his older siblings moved to the United States, he helped his mother with housework and with the care of two siblings, who are twins: Ana Maria, who is deaf, and Marcos, who has cerebral palsy.
A long journey begins
The mid-1980s were an especially violent period in Nicaraguan history, and his mother did not want Bismarck to be forced into military service. When he came to the U.S. in 1984, a 16-year-old seeking asylum, he crossed the border in Texas and then headed to Florida, where he briefly lived with his father.
Adjusting to his new life was not easy at first.
“I tried to register to complete my high school in Tampa, but because I was undocumented, they wouldn’t take me in,” the bishop-elect recalled. Living with his father, who had become a Jehovah’s Witness, proved difficult.
One of his older brothers was living in Brooklyn and invited Bismarck to join him. “He got me a job, and I started working in a clothing factory in Secaucus.”
As his working life developed, his spiritual life fell by the wayside. “When I came to the United States, I already feared that I would lose my faith,” Bishop-elect Chau said. “And that’s exactly what happened. I focused on working and was not going to Mass or anything. I just stopped practicing my faith.”
“Lord, I’m back”
It was Marcos who brought his brother Bismarck back to the Church. “Marcos already had an experience of the charismatic renewal when he was in Nicaragua. When he arrived, the first thing he said was, ‘I want to go to church!’ From my kitchen window, I could see the local church in our Williamsburg neighborhood, St. Mary’s, but I had never gone inside.”
The trip around the block proved transformative. “I remember walking into the church and saying, ‘Lord, I’m back,’” Bishop-elect Chau said.
Thanks to Marcos, he became increasingly involved in church activities. Attending a youth retreat, he heard another young man speak about how empty his life had felt before he found Christ. “He had been involved in drugs, alcohol, and gangs,” Bishop-elect Chau recalled. “I wasn’t into any of those things, but I could relate because I also felt like I had no purpose in my life.”
At one point in his youth, young Bismarck Chau even considered suicide, but “the fear of God” prevented him from ever attempting to take his own life. “I wanted to go to Heaven and not to Hell!” the bishop-elect recalled with a smile. “All the stuff you learn from CCD and your parents, it works!”
Moved by the young man’s testimony at the retreat, Bismarck, who was 19 at the time, realized that “I wanted what that guy had.”
“I remember at the end of the retreat, they called us forward and they prayed for me,” Bishop-elect Chau said. “My life completely changed there. It wasn’t like a flash of lightning, but something happened inside me. That emptiness, that void I felt, was gone. In its place, I was filled with this joy. I suddenly felt like I had a purpose.”
A question of vocation
It was not yet clear to Bismarck that he was being called to the priesthood, however. That realization took time.
“As I became involved in the life of the Church, people would keep coming up to me and ask: ‘You’re going to be a priest, aren’t you?’ ‘Are you going to be a priest?’ ‘You’re gonna be a priest, right?’” The bishop-elect grew serious as he recalled how all those questions led him to his vocation. “That’s why it’s so important to ask those kinds of questions of young people, because God speaks to us that way.”
Still, Bismarck tried to ignore the promptings, “until I met a priest, a Conventual Franciscan Friar, in one of the prayer groups I attended.”
One day, the friar entered the room where they were praying, “I suddenly saw myself in him,” Bishop-elect Chau said. “It was weird! I wondered, ‘What’s going on here?’ And that moment is when I started asking: ‘Lord, are you truly calling me to this?’”
Bismarck began praying, attending vocational retreats, and speaking to others. He became convinced that God was calling him to the priesthood and that he should be a Franciscan, but there was a problem: He was still undocumented.
“The Franciscans offered to help me get my green card,” Bishop-elect Chau said. “But I had heard stories of guys who entered the seminary and then left after getting their cards. I said to them, ‘If you help me get my green card and then, after receiving it, I find out this is not for me and I leave, I’m going to look like one of those guys. I don’t want that. I’ll wait until my paperwork comes out and I get the card myself.’”
An important call
Eventually, Bismarck did receive his green card, but by then, he had forgotten about the priesthood. He started working for a life insurance company and was working his way up the corporate ladder, from the mail room to the accounting department.
Successful but unsatisfied, he became a youth minister at a parish in New Jersey. He had stayed involved with the Charismatic Renewal in Brooklyn; it was during this period that he attended one of their national conferences in San Diego.
Years before, a young man’s testimony had led him back to his faith. Now, listening to another testimony, Bismarck had a breakthrough. The speaker was a young priest who, before his vocation, had practiced law for five years. “Even though he had been successful, he said that he felt like he was called to do something else,” Bishop-elect Chau recalled.
“At that time, I had my own apartment, my own car, and a good job — but I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I feel the same way!”
Returning from his trip, Bismarck shared with his pastor what he had experienced. “He did not waste any time,” Bishop-elect Chau said. “He told me, ‘Let’s call the vocations office right now! That was in April 2001. By August, I was in the seminary.”
Letting God lead us
When he stepped into the College Seminary of the Immaculate Conception at Saint Andrew’s Hall, Bismarck Chau was 34 years old. He was entering a new phase of his vocational journey. The circuitous path that led him to that point would later inform how he lived his priesthood, and especially how he would minister to young people.
“When I meet young people, I always share with them my story and how you need to pay attention to where God wants you to be. Of course, we need to take action, but then we need to allow God to lead us. That was always true for me, even after I became a priest.”
NEXT WEEK: In part two of our profile, Bishop-elect Chau talks with Jersey Catholic about his priestly ministry, the surprise of his call to become an auxiliary bishop, and what he is most looking forward to about his new job.
Featured image: Bishop-elect Pedro Bismarck Chau while he was serving as the Rector of the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark, NJ, and a young Bismarck Chau (bottom right) with his family. (Photos courtesy of Bishop-elect Pedro Bismark Chau)
