Priesthood Ordination of Jay Mello

The Fall River Diocese will welcome a new priest this weekend. Transitional Deacon Jay Mello will be ordained a priest for service in the diocese by Bishop George W. Coleman in an 11 a.m. Mass on Saturday, July 7, in St. Mary’s Cathedral, Fall River.

On Sunday, July 8, the newly-ordained Father Mello will celebrate his first Mass at 2 p.m. in Saints Peter and Paul Parish at Holy Cross Church in Fall River, his home parish where he was an altar server. Homilist at the Mass will be Rev. Roger J. Landry, who is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua Parish in New Bedford.

With just days to go before his ordination, Deacon Mello said he is “very excited and looking forward to getting into priestly ministry in the diocese.”

Deacon Mello, who is 27, is the son of Robert and Natalie Mello and has a younger brother, Alan.

Raised in Fall River, he attended Saints Peter and Paul School and Diman Regional Vocational Technical School, graduating in 1998.

As a seminarian, he studied at the Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, where he earned bachelor’s degrees in philosophy and theology in 2003. He was then sent to continue his preparation for the priesthood at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome where he completed four years of theology this spring. While there he resided at the North American College, which is the U.S. Seminary in Rome.

He was ordained a deacon in Rome in October 2006 in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. Present for the ceremony was a delegation of 18 persons from the diocese including family and clergy friends.

Throughout his seminary years, his formal studies were augmented with summer assignments as a counselor at Cathedral Camp in East Freetown; as a member of chaplaincy teams at St. Luke’s and Cape Cod Hospitals; assisting at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish, New Bedford, and Corpus Christi Parish, East Sandwich; studying Italian in New York and Portuguese in Lisbon; and during his time in Rome as a guide to the Scavi, the excavations beneath St. Peter’s Basilica.

After ordination, he will spend weekends this summer visiting parishes throughout the diocese to talk on vocational discernment.

“It should be great,” he said recently, “to use the excitement of being newly-ordained to preach about the priesthood.”

In the fall he will return to the North American College in Rome to complete one year of study for a licentiate degree in ecclesiology at the Gregorian University there.