EAST CHICAGO – Forty-seven-year-old Father Julio Bedoya, a priest of the Association of the Immaculate Conception, pastors St. Mary church with a youthful energy, eliciting smiles from the parishioners he serves. In the days of his youth, his household was not a Catholic environment, so he found his calling in a religious community.
After a weekday morning Mass, members gathered in a small plaza in front of the East Chicago church. Some women finished praying the Rosary and men talked about the renovations to the church sanctuary and floor. A discussion arose about the more than 50 members of the parish’s pro-life group who prayed with many others during the Life Chain on Ridge Road on the previous Sunday.
A colorful statue of the Blessed Mother stood in the center of the plaza, while Father Bedoya remained in the middle of the conversations at the church where he began his pastorate in June 2023.
“My spirituality is about us as the children of the Mother of God, and that invites us to bring Jesus to other people, especially through our Blessed Mother,” Father Bedoya said. “In my community, we have special daily prayers and adoration to Jesus (in the morning) and I think this is the principal font of grace.”
St. Mary is a vibrant church family by most measures – from Mass attendance, which parish officials say ranks in the top five in the diocese, to the support of a sizable youth group, to the offering of prayer groups in English and Spanish, to the availability of perpetual adoration in their chapel. Though Father Bedoya is a native of Columbia, a Catholic country, he has never taken the practice of the faith for granted.
“I feel that the faith among English speakers and Spanish speakers in America is strong,” Father Bedoya said. “Also, the people are very happy to thank the priest who celebrates Mass and hears confessions. Among both I have these wonderful experiences.”
Long before his priestly ordination on March 22, 2010, his subsequent work as a vocations director in Columbia and service in the U.S. in the Diocese of Gary, a young Bedoya was seeking purpose for his life. The Bedoya family provided a modest upbringing, but without the practice of the Catholic faith, of which a majority of Columbians identify.
“My family is very kind and joyful, my mother is very shy, but likes to help people,” said Father Bedoya, who is the older sibling to his brother and sister. “But in earlier years they did not go to church.”
Father Bedoya said he will never forget when his grandmother came to stay with the family and before she departed, she taught the unchurched boy a basic Catholic prayer.
“I have one time when I experienced the light: I remember when I was six years old, my grandmother came to visit us and she taught me about the faith in two actions – to bless myself (with the Sign of the Cross) and to bless my bed,” said Father Bedoya.
In his teenage years, frustrations with menial work and “a lot of fighting” in his home got him to the church on time. The youth sought out an environment in which to pray and to have fellowship. When the AIC priests held a revival mission at his home parish of Nuestra Señora de Candelaria, he joined them for discussion and worship.
“I had lost my hope, I had many troubles, and I didn’t know what to do,” Father Bedoya recalled.
Slowly but surely, as a young adult, Bedoya started developing a closer relationship with God, a process that was self-started. Then, the work of the AIC padres bore fruit for him and his fellow parishioners. Well-established townsfolk began to step up as benefactors, and helped him put his growing faith into action by organizing efforts to assist the materially poor.
In August 2000, Bedoya joined a three-month retreat hosted by the AIC in another Colombian state. After that time of discernment, a direct question was put to the potential seminarians: “Will you go back to what you were doing, or come back with the community?”
The future Father Bedoya, who appreciated the communal prayer, told his parents about the joy he found among the ordained and fellow discerners. His dad said, “OK,” but his mom remained silent on the matter of his vocational preferences.
Long-distance phone conversations were too expensive for the seminarian, so he communicated to his family via letters. After not receiving any correspondence from his mother for some time, a letter arrived at his residence with the AIC. Father Bedoya retold the contents of the letter: “Son, at the beginning I was really sad, but it’s okay.”
That support from his mother helped launch the seminarian into a vocation in which, like his order, AIC, emphasizes faith and action with great love for the Virgin Mary. “We receive, live and proclaim,” he explained. “We live to reclaim Jesus Christ in the Church and in the whole world. And we imitate the Virgin Mary.”
Father Bedoya joins several other AIC priests serving like him in the U.S. He need look no further than St. Margaret Mary in Hammond, where Father Luis Ferneidy Iral Cardona is pastor. The two priests grew up in the same town.
Eva Cornejo, parish secretary and 17-year church member said Father Bedoya’s English skills are coming along well. But she feels the priest speaks also with universal signs of faith and love for his fellow believers.
“Father Julio, in my opinion, I think is doing great,” Cornejo said. “In the beginning, when Father Julio came here, I asked, ‘Father, are you going to do a bilingual Mass?’”
She said his efforts to help speakers of one language appreciate the other have paid dividends in the form of increased Mass attendance. “You can see the church is sometimes filled with people.”
Caption: Association of the Immaculate Conception Father Julio Bedoya gathers with parishioners after a morning Mass on Oct. 8 at St. Mary church in East Chicago, where he is pastor. Father Bedoya, a native of Columbia, came to a deeper faith as a discerner among a religious order and finds great joy in serving parishioners who he said show much gratitude. (Anthony D. Alonzo photo)