Simple, spiritual life luring more to mission work

from the North Jersey Record

This shows that there are benefits to doing charity work. This article from the North Jersey Record profiles a man who has had enough of the rat race. - Kale

BY JOHN CHADWICK

During his days working in corporate America, Doug Garofalo may have seemed an unlikely candidate for the Franciscan religious order and its embrace of voluntary poverty.

But even as Garofalo worked as an accountant for chains like Saks Fifth Avenue and Aeropostale, the River Edge native maintained a strong connection to his hometown church, St. Peter the Apostle, and kept a decidedly modest lifestyle.

"I had a very modest house in Hackensack," Garofalo, 46, said. "I was living as simple as possible in the retail world of Bergen County."

His preference for simple, spiritual living and his yearning for a new direction led him in 2002 to the Franciscan Mission Service, part of the Catholic order founded by St. Francis of Assisi.

But Garofalo, who by his own description is a good dancer who enjoys dating and maintaining a wide social network, didn't see himself as a priest.

So he became a lay missioner - a role in which he wouldn't have to take religious vows but could embrace the Franciscan ethic and participate in overseas projects to help poor communities. Lay missioners are prevalent in the Catholic Church, and function like missionaries, though they typically travel to Catholic areas and focus more on relief work than evangelization, Garofalo said.

"I felt I was called by the Holy Spirit," Garofalo said during a recent telephone interview from Washington, D.C., where he now lives. "I knew I was being called to do something more concrete for the church. I knew it was not a call to the priesthood."

A growing number of Catholics are hearing a similar calling.

Jim Lindsay, executive director of the Maryland-based Catholic Network of Volunteer Service, said the number of Catholics participating in some form of lay mission work in the network has steadily increased and is now at about 10,000 per year. There are some 200 organizations, from religious orders to universities, offering lay mission work, up from about 160 a decade ago, he added.

The missions can range from one week working in an inner-city soup kitchen to spending several years overseas in an impoverished nation. The common element is that volunteers leave their homes, work full time and frequently live communally.

"Certainly priests and sisters and brothers have been doing this work over many, many years," Lindsay said. "Laypeople now have a greater realization that they are part of the mission of the church itself."

One of the people Garofalo consulted with about his decision was Julie Burkey, an adjunct professor at Seton Hall University who runs a program called Christian Employment Outreach, or CEO.

"I'm seeing people all time who reach a level of success, in terms of the how the world defines it," Burkey said. "Then they turn around and say, 'Is this all there is?' "

Garofalo signed up for a three-year program that included two years in Brazil, where he lived with Franciscan friars, worked in a day care center and helped administer a micro-credit loan program for the working poor.

After returning last year, he has been serving as the development director of the Franciscan Mission Service.

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