After a decade of shepherding the faithful at St. Patrick’s Parish in Ripon, Father Peter Carota is moving on to the next chapter of his spiritual service to the Lord.
“I want to start a Catholic Church television station that has the Latin Mass every day. That’s my dream,” he said.
Like the early pioneers who came west in search of their dream – “we don’t know where we’re going but we’re on our way,” was their common refrain – Father Carota is on his way to fulfill his dream although, he admits, “I don’t know how that’s going to happen.”
But that’s exactly what he intends to do during his year-long sabbatical, to learn how he can put that into effect. He will be traveling to visit monasteries that offer the Latin Mass as the focal point of their spiritual life. Among the monasteries he plans to visit is the Clear Creek Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and another monastery in Wyoming.
Two years ago, he wanted to start an order of priests who would “go around and tell everybody all the beauty and all the sacredness of the Tridentine Mass which I just discovered five years ago,” he said. “So that’s why I asked for a sabbatical year to do this.”
“I hope and pray that there will be a holy priest here that will continue preaching the gospel, and that will continue having the Latin Mass here, and that someday there will be a beautiful church back there,” he said, referring to the 22 acres that the church purchased a few years ago and where a chapel has been built. A new rectory is also now part of that property.
“I have grown in these ten years. Hopefully you have too. Five years ago, the Pope encouraged saying of the Latin Mass again. Since saying it these last five years, I have truly understood my priesthood in a totally deeper way as being sacrificial. Above all, I love the reverence and sacredness of this mass. Jesus is God and truly present in Holy Communion. Therefore we should kneel and receive Him with all reverence that God deserves. This mass is only concerned with adoring God…. Please pray for me, and thank you for all you have done for me. Thank you to all who have taken seriously your spiritual growth as Catholics. With your help, the parish has a great future with the 22 acres.”
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