Serenity Day

Fr. Mike Rizzo

 

On June 6, 2020, Bishop Kevin Vann ordained four new priests for the Diocese of Orange at Christ Cathedral in Garden Grove, California. Michael J. Rizzo, a 60-year-old widower, father, and business executive, was among them and now serves as a parochial vicar at Saints Simon and Jude Catholic Church in Huntington Beach.

“I retired to the priesthood,” Fr. Rizzo jokes.

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It’s a busy retirement. Masses, baptisms, weddings, funerals, counseling sessions, ministering to the sick, and the many other varied responsibilities of a parish priest pack his schedule. But Fr. Rizzo is thrilled with this radically new stage of his life, and his journey to this holy calling is as inspiring as it is unusual.

In one sense, Fr. Rizzo’s path to the priesthood began on the worst day of his life. His beloved wife, Rosemary, a two-time cancer survivor, died unexpectedly of a heart attack at their home in Lake Oswego, Oregon on February 28, 2012. Her passing devastated Mike and their son, John, who was in the middle of his freshman year at Claremont McKenna College. Mike had planned to retire soon after a successful career in business, and he and Rosemary were looking forward to traveling and eventually moving close to wherever John settled after college. “We had a plan, and I didn’t have any independent plan,” Fr. Rizzo says. “It was all part of my wife and I as a team in this plan, and so that plan was obviously shot.”

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Still, in the aftermath of Rosemary’s death, the thought of entering the priesthood had not entered his mind. But the seed had been planted much earlier.

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