Saint Rose of Lima Parish has new priest

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Father José Nestor P. Lachica

PARK CITY – Father José Nestor P. Lachica has wasted no time getting involved in the Diocese of Salt Lake City. The week he arrived in Utah, he met with brother priests at the Fall Convocation in Park City, then traveled to Layton, where he will serve as a parish priest when not following orders as an Army chaplain.

Fr. Lachica’s home diocese, in the Philippines, holds retreats but not convocations, he said, adding that he enjoyed the local event. “It’s an informative week. It helps you understand the Church in this particular area.”

A captain in the United States Army, Fr. Lachica is the chaplain for the 98 Signal Battalion, which operates out of Mesa, Ariz. However, Fr. Lachica asked his commander for permission to serve in a Salt Lake parish when he’s not on duty with his battalion. Locally, his duties will be as a visiting priest at Saint Rose of Lima Parish in Layton.

Fr. Lachica was raised in the Philippines, where he was ordained Dec. 21, 2002. Previous to his current assignment, he was at a parish in Texas that was near a military base. At that time, he didn’t know what the chaplaincy was all about, but then he was asked to celebrate a Mass on base, and realized that he had found his calling.

“Chaplaincy is all about serving the soldiers,” he said. “Serving the people of God in the service, helping them, especially those families who are separated from their loved ones, those who are in the service, those who are deployed, and those who are already there in the base who have problems of their own.”

A chaplain’s role is to give guidance, he said. “Mostly that’s we do in the service – talk to the soldiers, tell them of the plan of God in their lives, tell them the meaning of their lives being in the service.”

Already a commissioned officer, Fr. Lachica will enter the Chaplain Basic Officer Leadership Course in January. After he completes that training at Fort Jackson in North Carolina, he expects to return to Utah. Until then, he intends to concentrate on his work at St. Rose of Lima Parish and his military unit, he said.