Fr. Ross Miceli made lasting impact during time in Elk County
This week marks the beginning of the next chapter of Fr. Ross Miceli’s journey as a priest as he begins his new assignment at St. Jude the Apostle Parish in Erie. However, as Miceli moves forward with ministering to a new congregation, he leaves behind a lasting impact at St. Boniface Parish in Kersey, as well as throughout the area, from the 12 years he spent at his first assignment in Elk County.
After growing up in the DuBois area and graduating from DuBois Central Catholic High School, Miceli entered the priesthood. His first assignment was as campus minister at Elk County Catholic High School. At that time, he resided at St. Leo Magnus Parish in Ridgway and also served as sacramental administrator at Holy Cross Church in Brandy Camp.
During his time at Elk County Catholic, Miceli was instrumental in implementing a change in the school’s language curriculum as well as starting two new organizations for students.
Students at Elk County Catholic High School had previously had the option of taking classes in languages such as Spanish and French, but there was not an opportunity to study classical languages, such as Latin. Miceli changed that, reimplementing Latin as a language that was taught not only at the high school level, but eventually throughout the Elk County Catholic School System.
“We had a little bit of a program started in the high school but then expanded it all the way through the elementary school and the whole school system,” Miceli said. “We’ve been studying classical curriculum and seeing the benefits, especially for linguistics and language and brain development, so we wanted to really promote that.”
According to Miceli, learning basic elements of Latin is a good starting point for studying other modern languages and has provided students with a foundation that they have then been able to build upon if they choose to study other languages.
“I believe St. Leo will be continuing with the Latin program, and hopefully the high school will as well,” Miceli said.
Continuing with the theme of building upon a foundation that had already been established,
to embrace the goodness. We're very fortunate to have so many wonderful priests who really care about the people and see the church as an opportunity for everyone to grow in their faith and in their love for one another. Hopefully that will continue.” Miceli added that anyone who finds themselves in the area of 2801 W. 6th St., Erie, which is the location of St. Jude the Apostle Parish, is always welcome to stop and visit. “We hope to continue to make (St. Jude the Apostle Parish) a space that's welcoming. St. Jude is beautiful, not only in the summer, but all year. It has a very welcoming space,” Miceli said. “It's more of a modern parish and can seat 900, which is plenty of room for everyone to visit. If they're in the area, they're more than welcome to come and stop by and have a cup of coffee or just share what's going on in their lives.” Miceli also expressed his gratitude to all those who he worked alongside during his time as part of the Elk County community. “(I am grateful for) how wonderful all the people are here and how much we all worked together through a lot of very difficult situations, and that's really what you need,” Miceli said. “You need a community, specifically a faith community that's committed through good times and bad times and kind of is always there for one another.” Miceli also was involved with creating a new service-based initiative at Elk County Catholic High School: Elk County Helping Others (ECHO). “ECHO was sort of a new way to rebrand our service projects and help give it some focus,” Miceli said. ECHO won the Charity and Service Award from the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. in 2012. Miceli was also instrumental in starting a chapter of Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) at Elk County Catholic. “I'd been highly involved with FBLA when I was in high school, and it was a really good experience for me,” Miceli said. “When I came to Elk County Catholic, I saw that we could maybe use some leadership instruction and have that tie-in, so I enlisted Marlene Stubber, who was doing some of the technology and business classes, to co-advise that. We have been doing that for over 10 years, and we've had regional and state officers.” Following his initial assignment at Elk County Catholic, Miceli was later appointed as pastor at St. Boniface Parish in Kersey. He held that position until his new assignment in Erie began. During his time as pastor, Miceli oversaw a number of changes within the St. Boniface Community, including the completion of renovations at St. Boniface, the closure of Holy Cross Church in Brandy Camp and merging of the two communities, and the closure of St. Boniface's elementary school and creation of St. Boniface Christian Montessori Preschool. The preschool was something of which Miceli was particularly proud, and he noted that St. Boniface received a $25,000 grant from the StackpoleHall Foundation for the purchase of materials and staff training to make the project become a reality. “It's going very well,” Miceli said of the preschool. “We noticed we had a need in our community to continue with some form of education and faith formation at St. Boniface. We always knew that was a possibility, so we decided to pilot it in 20202021 in the midst of COVID with all the restrictions, but we still were able to pull off our first year.” Among Miceli's other accomplishments during his time as pastor at St. Boniface were restoring the Resurrection window, establishing the Evergreen Endowment for the parish, establishing the Amazing Parish Program, establishing the whole family Catechesis program with Sophia Press, starting the Block Party and Lessons and Carols, creating the Saint Joseph Italian Garden and an altar at the cross, and building the CGS Atrium. Reflecting back on his time at St. Boniface, Miceli referred to his time as pastor as having been a great experience. “(St. Boniface) is kind of a right-size parish,” Miceli said. “It's not too big. I was able to get to know quite a few people from Holy Cross, who then came up to St. Boniface. Everybody merged together really well and blended well. Growing up in the DuBois area and my grandparents being buried in Brockway, I found out I was related distantly to a lot of people and we kind of have the same family stories and histories in this area. That made it feel like home very quickly and helped me build a lot of relationships very quickly.” Miceli credited his time at both Elk County Catholic and St. Boniface with helping him gain a lot of hands-on experience. “I grew up a lot and just really kind of honed my skills (during my time in Elk County),” Miceli said. “Everything we learned in seminary is very theoretical. As much as they try to send us to do as much pastoral work as we can, once you are kind of in the parish and have to make those day-byday decisions and really kind of work with people, it teaches you a lot about yourself and how well you can work with others.” Miceli noted that his religious work within the community extended beyond his own parish and included ecumenical materials and fun things, including some holy water, and sent one to every family. Our Kersey Knights of Columbus delivered those to everyone. It was like a little 'thinking of you' gift. We did some meals that were free that we took to anybody that wanted a meal during COVID. Our Knights of Columbus helped deliver those too.” According to Miceli, St. Jude the Apostle Parish already has some platforms in place for similar outreach to continue. The parish, he noted, is located near the peninsula. While it has an affiliated elementary school that is part of the Erie Catholic School System, his initial assignment there does not involve any teaching. “We'll be continuing to do a lot of outreach,” Miceli said. “In particular, we have a lot of youth and young adult outreach available up there and we really try to do a lot for the whole family. I'm going to be collaborating with some of my friends who already work there and in Erie to share the good news hopefully in a much larger way.” For his former parishioners at St. Boniface, Miceli encouraged them to embrace the change that comes with Fr. Kevin Holland taking over as the new pastor. “Change can be difficult, but in fact, change often brings good things,” Miceli said. “It's good for all of us to kind of accept that change and outreach with other parishes in the Kersey area as well. “We had a very nice ecumenical movement in Kersey,” Miceli said. “We worked together with the Lutheran, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches.” As for the biggest challenge he faced during his time as pastor, Miceli cited the COVID-19 pandemic. At the height of the pandemic, gathering together physically was not an option, but he needed to still have a way to reach his parishioners. This led to the start of Boniface Live, which allowed for livestreaming of Mass, and the establishment of a presence for the parish on other social media platforms. Miceli noted that Boniface Live has been able to reach people all over the world. Locally, other steps were also taken during COVID to keep members of the parish connected. “When COVID started, everybody thought maybe it would be two weeks, maybe a month or something. Once we realized it was going to be longer than that, we kind of moved into a different game plan where we started to make sure we were reaching out to all of our parishioners,” Miceli said. “We created a phone chain so we could check on everyone and have people call one another and make sure they were okay. We did our Boniface Box, which was very popular. We packed up a bunch of different religious