Community Corner
Pastoral Changes at Rye Presbyterian Church and Rye's Church of the Resurrection
New pastor takes over at Resurrection on July 1; acting pastor/administrator stays while search is underway to replace retiring Rye Presbyterian Church pastor with results expected by the fall.
Rye Presbyterian Church’s Dr. Nancy A. De Vries is leaving after five years on the job and Msgr. Donald Dwyer is coming in from the Bronx as new pastor at Rye’s Church of the Resurrection July 1.
Msgr. Dwyer will replace Msgr. Edward O’Donnell, who has been filling in as interim pastor/administrator since the death of Msgr. Patrick Boyle in February 2011.
The Rev. Katherine Stanford will be preaching in Rev. De Vries' place Sunday during the 8:30 and 10 a.m. worship services.
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Msgr. Dwyer, former pastor of the Church of the Assumption in the Pelham Bay section of the Bronx, will celebrate 10 a.m. Mass at Resurrection on Sunday.
Msgr. O’Donnell is retired, but has helped out at Resurrection for the past several years because of the shortage of priests in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese. He will remain at Resurrection, celebrating the 12:30 p.m. Mass this Sunday.
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In her closing remarks to RPB, Rev. De Vries, a recovering cancer survivor, said, “As I leave, know that I will miss you deeply, and I will keep you in my prayers for all the time to come.”
“The obvious question is what’s next?” asked Rev. John Miller, pastor of Scarsdale’s Hitchcock Presbyterian Church, member of the Committee of Ministry of Hudson River Presbytery and Vice Chair of Westchester County’s Region 2.
In a statement to the Rye Presbyterian Church congregation, Miller said he would be serving as Committee on Ministry liaison for the congregation.
That includes discussing the roles of staff and beginning the search process for an interim pastor, possibly a national search. An Interim Pastor Search Committee will interview potential candidates and select the final candidate by this fall.
In the interim, associate pastor Rev. Daniel Love has been taking on many additional duties, basically filling the role that Msgr. O’Donnell did at the nearby Church of the Resurrection during the Archdiocesan search for a new pastor.
Msgr. O’Donnell explained that the reason for the delay in appointing a new Resurrection pastor was a shortage of available priests.
“There are 10 pastoral positions open in the Archdiocese, and there is a domino effect. For every appointment, it means a priest has to be found to fill the vacated place in the parish of the appointee and that isn’t easy nowadays,” he said.
Msgr. O’Donnell, a priest for 59 years, was chancellor for the Archdiocese at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and handled all matters related to the priesthood prior to retiring and moving to Resurrection in 2002 to help in the parish.
O'Donnell has no plans to leave Resurrectioon and will continue working as senior priest with the church’s parochial vicars: Fathers Robert Verigni, Zacarias Nadackal, Thomas Lim and weekend associate Thomas Collins.
New hires at Rye Presbyterian Church include Denise LeVan as pastoral sssistant; recent NYU grad Carolyn Malloy as alerical sssistant, and Rosemary Annunziato as church secretary.
