A holy man of the cloth

Growing up across the street from St. Anthony of Padua Roman Catholic Church in South Ozone Park, 26-year-old James Kuroly always knew he was a little different from the other kids in his neighborhood.
“As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a priest,” he said.
And unlike others his age who might have focused on sports, dating or any of a dozen other adolescent endeavors, “My life was always centered around the life of the church,” Kuroly said.
It was from spending so much time at St. Anthony — first as an altar server until eighth grade and, later, as a sacristan during high school — that Kuroly felt himself drawn to an extraordinary trait he recognized in the priests he befriended.
“My whole life I’ve been around priests who radiated with love for what they do. They bring people closer to Christ not because it’s a job but because it’s a calling,” he said excitedly. “A priest is somebody who’s in love with Christ and in love with the people they serve.”
And so, on Saturday, June 2—the same day on which he will turn 27—friends and family will gather around Kuroly at St. James Cathedral in Brooklyn when he receives the sacrament of Holy Orders. As such, he’ll become an ordained priest in the Diocese of Brooklyn.
He will be the first person from St. Anthony’s to be ordained a priest in over 30 years, and the only born and bred Queens-ite being ordained in his class of eight.
But Kuroly, affectionately known as “Deacon Jim” to the parishioners he currently serves at Holy Child Jesus Church in Richmond Hill, wasn’t always so demonstrative with his faith.
When he attended Cathedral Preparatory Seminary in Elmhurst as a high school student, Kuroly kept his pastoral proclivities close to his heart. He told friends he was attending the college prep school (described on its web site as a school for young men willing to seriously consider the priesthood) because of the quality education he would receive there—not because of his spirituality.
“Maybe it was fear of what people would say or think,” he speculated.
After graduating from Cathedral Prep in 1998, Kuroly went on to study for a bachelor’s degree in philosophy at St. John’s University. While there he lived at the Cathedral Seminary Residence of the Immaculate Conception in Douglaston where he further contemplated the priesthood.
Since graduating from St. John’s in 2002, Kuroly has been studying for both a master of arts degree in theology and a master of divinity at the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Huntington, New York. He will graduate in mid-May.
During his third year in seminary, Kuroly further explored his calling at St. Mary Star of the Sea Church in Far Rockaway, where he was posted during his pastoral year. There he had the opportunity to shadow the priests and to observe and learn from both them and the people they served.
“The priests I lived with were always around,” he said. They weren’t just present at a wake or funeral but spent time with grieving families during the sometimes-difficult times that followed, he explained.
On December 8, 2006 Kuroly became an ordained deacon.
It came as no surprise to Kuroly’s family that he would choose to become a priest.
“It really started when he was in high school,” said his father, also named James. “The last two years he felt he had a calling…we encouraged it, if it was what he wanted to do,” the elder Kuroly said.
“They’ve been nothing but supportive,” said Kuroly, who described his parents as having made certain that he and his older two brothers received strong foundations in the Catholic faith.
Kuroly does not yet know where he’ll be assigned—he won’t know that until after he is ordained. But since he will be able to celebrate mass by himself in his new role as priest, he will do so for the first time at 3 p.m. on Sunday, June 3 at St. Anthony—the church of his youth.
It will be a Mass of Thanksgiving—to give thanks for his ordination.