Sunday, May 13, 2012

Happy 25th Anniversary Father Cregan!

     Our pastor, Father John Cregan, celebrated his 25 anniversary of ordination to the priesthood on May 9, 2012.  The Blessed Sacrament Parish community held a cookout on Sunday, May 12 to congratulate and thank him for his many years of priestly service. 

     The Catholic Herald newspaper included the following article on Father Cregan in its May 9 issue:

Father John C. Cregan was born Nov. 13, 1939, in the Bronx, New York. An altar boy since the third grade, he attended St. Margaret of Cortona School, and the nearby Fordham Preparatory School and Fordham University.

While at Fordham, Father Cregan enrolled in the U.S. Marine Corps Platoon Leader Class program and, as a result, served in the U.S. Marine Corps for more than 20 years. He spent tours in North Carolina, Florida, Virginia, Cuba, Japan and Vietnam. It was in Vietnam, while lying in a foxhole, looking at the stars and fingering pieces of a broken rosary, that Father Cregan began to realize he was being called to the priesthood.

 In the early 1980s, Father Cregan began taking classes at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md. He was ordained by Arlington Bishop John R. Keating May 9, 1987.

He served at St. Patrick Parish, Chancellorsville, 1987-91; Church of the Nativity, Burke, 1991-93; and St. Elizabeth Parish, Colonial Beach, 1993-96. In 1996, he was named pastor of Blessed Sacrament in Alexandria, where he remains today.












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