Vocation Discernment
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Vocation Office
Western Dominican Province
5890 Birch Court
Oakland, CA 94618-1626
(510)-596-1821
Our Vocations require a great deal of support, from the first moment they begin their novitiate until the last moments of their retirement. Please do conside visiting our donation page and helping form and sustain the priests and brothers who will serve you in the future, serve you now and have served you in the past.
Saints and Blesseds
The Order of Friars Preachers,
The Dominican Order,
has a beautiful history of learning, service and holiness manifested in its saints and blesseds of every age since its foundation by St. Dominic de Guzman. Do enjoy the periodic postings of such stories as are available from various sources, especially our own archives.
Religious Retirement
Our elderly and infirm friars receive the best care we have available to us, as in any family. We rely heavily on the donations of others for our own existence and thus when one of our own becomes incapable of further ministry due to age or infirmity, those same donations help us support the sometimes necessary special care required by such members of our communities.
We prefer to care for our elderly and infirm in our own houses so that the life of a religious community can be a part of a friars life as long as possible. This is also the most economical in many ways. We strive to use donations wisely. But sometimes a care facility is essential. As we, as a Province, do not benefit from the national collection for retired religious, we ask that you assist us in caring for these friars who have prayed, taught, served and ministered for so many years amomg the people of the Western United States and beyond.
Please, in your kindness, consider assisting us in this work of brotherly love.
Many thanks in advance.
Catholicism
It's just the right thing
Fr. Robert Francis Christian, OP
I was born and raised in San Francisco. Although I grew up in a parish adjoining St. Dominic’s, I had no contact with Dominicans. I attended a Jesuit high school and a Jesuit university.
However, while spending my junior year of college in Florence, Italy, I lived in a Dominican parish, and up the hill in Fiesole was a Dominican novitiate. During that year I realized that God was calling me to priesthood in a contemplative and active religious order that prays the choral office and shares all things—even decisions—in common. So it was from Florence that I wrote to the vocation director in California, and after graduation I entered the novitiate in Oakland.
After ordination, my first ministry was teaching and campus ministry at Dominican College (now Dominican University) in San Rafael. In 1979 I was given permission to study for a doctorate, and I left for the Dominican pontifical university, the Angelicum, in Rome, little suspecting that I would spend most of my life there.
I finished my doctorate in dogmatic theology in 1984 and was sent first to Riverside, and then to Seattle, to work in campus ministry. I was only one year in Seattle when the Master of the Order reassigned me to Rome. From 1985 until 1997, with the exception of a sabbatical, I taught at the Angelicum. Then I returned to the Province as socius and vicar provincial for two years. I went back to Rome in 1999, and indications are that I shall be in Rome for the foreseeable future.
I have served in many administrative capacities both at the university and in the Dominican community in addition to my academic duties, and I have had the privilege of doing some small jobs at the Vatican. Teaching students from every corner of the world (98 countries are represented in the Angelicum student body) has been enriching, and the combination of duty and frequent flier miles have made it possible for me, in turn, to visit many parts of the world.
Nevertheless I remain affiliated to the Western Dominican Province and am happy to return for at least a brief period of ministry in the province, among the brethren, every year.
