By Fr. Luis Ramon Rivera 3052474405 - St. Maurice at Resurrection Church

Photographer: JONATHAN MARTINEZ | FC

Consortia Medina hugs her son, Deacon Jesus 'Jets' Medina at the start of the ordination Mass.

Photographer: MARLENE QUARONI | FC

Father Giovanni Peña imparts his first blessing -- and a kiss -- to his mother, Luz Caicedo de Peña.

MIAMI — After three girls, he was “the most awaited son.”

“I even walked on my knees from the door of the church,” said Consortia Medina, recalling how she prayed to Our Lady of Perpetual Help in her native Philippines.

When Jesus Medina finally was born, his name was deliberately chosen.

“I offered him to God,” said Consortia, known as Connie, and now a member of St. Martha Parish in Miami Shores.

On May 8, 45 years after that offering, her first-born son became a priest of the Archdiocese of Miami.

“I’m not losing him. I offered him. I know he is in God’s hands,” said a “nervous” Medina as she waited for the ordination Mass to begin.

Father ‘Jets’ Medina was among the last four priests to be ordained for the archdiocese by Archbishop John C. Favalora, who has ordained a total of 61 during his 15-year tenure here.

Two others who were ordained with him also came to south Florida from elsewhere: Father Giovanni de Jesus Peña, 45, and Father Armando Tolosa, 40, came from Colombia. A fourth, Father Luis Rivero, 28, was born in Spain but grew up in Miami.

The stories of the new priests reveal how divine providence works in meandering, mysterious ways — and how God often makes his call heard through human voices.

Photographer: ANA RODRIGUEZ-SOTO| FC

With the imposition of hands, Archbishop John C. Favalora ordains Jesus 'Jets' Medina as a priest of the Archdiocese of Miami.

FATHER MEDINA
After 10 years working as a pilot for Philippine Airlines, Father Medina was invited to come to Miami by his mother, who had settled here a decade earlier.

He thought he could continue his career as a pilot for an American airline — he is FAA-licensed as both a flight engineer and a transport pilot — but he arrived in September 2001 — not the best time for the airline industry.

While waiting for a pilot opening, he began volunteering at his mother’s parish, St. Martha in Miami Shores.

“I enjoyed volunteering,” said Father Medina, 45, “first music ministry and then working in the office; then cleaning the hall, and then the bathrooms.”

All the while, St. Martha’s pastor, Father Federico Capdepon, “this very charismatic parish priest … every day would tell me, ‘I think, Jets, you have a vocation.’ I told him, ‘Father Federico, after I get my job call, I’m out of here.’”

In 2004, ‘Jets’ Medina entered the seminary. He is the first Filipino priest ordained for Miami.

Photographer: ANA RODRIGUEZ-SOTO| FC

With the imposition of hands, Archbishop John C. Favalora ordains Giovanni Peña as a priest of the Archdiocese of Miami.

FATHER PEÑA
Born in Medellín, Colombia, Father Peña earned a bachelor’s degree in agricultural technology. For several years, he worked for Banacol, a company that exports bananas and other tropical fruits to the world. In September 1993, he came to south Florida and worked in Cuban bakeries to support himself.

“I learned everything about the bakery,” he recalled. “Oven. Bread. Donuts. Everything.”

He also joined St. Dominic Parish in Miami, where a Dominican priest, Father Desiderio Eguino, better known as Father Yeyo, “told me, ‘Giovanni, why don’t you try to think about the priesthood?’ In that moment, I began to think about my discernment process.”

He went to several retreats at the Trappist monastery in Conyers, Ga., and met with the archdiocese’s then vocations director, Father Pedro Corces. In 2004, he entered the seminary. He is the first priest in his family.

“It gave me great joy that he had a vocation,” said his mother, Luz Caicedo de Peña, who finally was able to see her son after a 17-year separation. “I did not think God would give me so many years of life, to watch him become a priest. God has given me this gift.”

Photographer: MARLENE QUARONI | FC

With the imposition of hands, Archbishop John C. Favalora ordains Luis Rivero as a priest of the Archdiocese of Miami.

FATHER RIVERO
He is a Spaniard, born in what he describes as “paradise,” Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands. But Father Rivero grew up in southwestern Miami-Dade County, and graduated from St. Brendan High School.

It would have seemed he was destined for a lucrative career in business: While in high school, he began working at a furniture store, eventually moving up to operations manager, where he supervised the work of people much older than him.
Yet he entered the seminary — St. John Vianney, next door to St. Brendan — right out of high school.

“I always had the curiosity of the priesthood,” he recalled. “I would go to Mass and ask my mom, when I was very little — she tells me, I don’t remember — that I wanted to serve.”

He served as an acolyte and religious education teacher at his parish, St. Timothy, where the associate pastor at the time, Father Marcos Somarriba, saw something in him.

“I knew since I first met him. We talked a lot. I told him he was meant for the priesthood,” said Father Somarriba, now pastor of St. Kieran Parish in Miami. “For me, he is like my replacement. He is the type of priest I wish (to minister) to my family.”

“Yeah, I had a promising career, but I didn’t lose it. No one took it away from me. I gave it up freely,” Father Rivero said. “I knew that wasn’t going to bring me happiness.”

Photographer: ANA RODRIGUEZ-SOTO| FC

With the imposition of hands, Archbishop John C. Favalora ordains Armando Tolosa as a priest of the Archdiocese of Miami.

FATHER TOLOSA
A native of Rio Negro, a small town in the region of Colombia whose capital is Bucaramanga, Father Tolosa is one of 24 children, the youngest of nine from his father’s second marriage. He studied finance and accounting but never practiced it, working instead as a consultant engineer for petroleum companies.

At one point, he started his own consulting business, but when it faltered in 2000, he came to south Florida. His goal was “to pay my debts and go back to Colombia to make another business.”

He worked odd jobs here to support himself — busboy, waiter, dishwasher — and joined San Isidro Parish in Pompano Beach, where Father Roberto Garza, the archdiocese’s current vocations director, was pastor. After a long spell of working 50-60 hours a week, he decided he needed a break and took part in a Growing in the Spirit retreat.

“Something happened that weekend,” he recalled, that moved him to grow closer to the Church and the Lord. “I was really hungry and thirsty for God.”

He entered the seminary in 2004. Although his family is very devout, he had never considered the priesthood before, but said he does remember always playing one of the 12 apostles in the Holy Week processions in his home town.

“We just went around the town in a truck and we just ate grapes and bread and just represented the Last Supper with Jesus,” he said. “I think the Lord had planted that seed in my heart, all those moments in my childhood, and now when I came to this country, just with a different purpose, God just broke my contract. He said, ‘I have a new contract for you right now, Armando’.”

Listen to the vocations stories of the new priests at www.miamiarch.org, by clicking on “Conversations with Archbishop Favalora” and going to the segments for May 4, 5, 6 and 7. 

Read Archbishop Favalora's homily.

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