‘Some younger priests might take a short vacation or go for further studies right after ordination. Almost immediately, Cabrera took an assignment at Corpus Christi parish in Council Bluffs, Iowa.’
ALLOW me to share briefly the story of Fr. Luisito Cabrera, associate pastor at a parish in the American Midwestern state of Iowa, who last Saturday completed his first year as a priest. Like most newly ordained priests, the Fil-Am clergyman is just getting warmed up, except that in 49 days, he will be 64.
Earlier, Fr. Cabrera spoke about his “late” vocation. His calling, he says, began almost 50 years ago. It took several twists and turns, including three seminaries, a stint as a dance instructor, a job as a United Nations press officer, and even 24 years of married life.
In 1976, when in third-year high school at San Sebastian College in Manila, 15-year-old “Chito” Cabrera had a dream while praying in the iconic minor basilica of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. He dreamt that Jesus on the crucifix spoke to him. “There was no sound,” he recalls. “So I couldn’t really hear what he was saying.” That dream was followed by a late-night TV show on St. Francis of Assisi. Right away, he told his mother of his desire to enter the seminary. He wanted to join the local Capuchin Franciscans, but he says he was rejected because he was too young.
“I was insistent,” he recalls. “I had to go in.” Chito and his mother learned of a high-school seminary run by the Salesians in Pampanga. The next school year, Cabrera joined the senior class of Don Bosco Juniorate in Bacolor (to which, by no accident, I belonged). He spent the next two years at Don Bosco Canlubang in Calamba, Laguna. But before he could begin his novitiate, he joined his family in America.
As a seminarian in the early ’80s with the Capuchin Franciscan Province of St. Mary — finally — Cabrera studied communications and journalism at St. John’s University in New York.
Upon graduation, he took a sabbatical. During the day, he drove a taxi cab and at night taught ballroom dancing. Dancing was not on the Salesian or Capuchin curriculum, but inspired by a chewing-gum commercial, he was led to the Fred Astaire Dance Studios, where he took a few lessons. “[I]found out I was actually very good at it,” he says. “When I couldn’t afford classes anymore on a cab driving salary, I was going to stop the classes but the studio offered to train me to teach.”
There, as an instructor in 1988, he met his future wife, Ruth Ann Patch, an aspiring actress from Des Moines, whom he called Rae. She called him Luis. He decided he needed “a real job” so he worked for various “scientific, technical, and medical” publications in New York. Four years later, they got married.
In 1996, Cabrera got a job as a UN press officer in Geneva. “Rae and I packed our bags (and pet rabbit) and went on an adventure in Switzerland for 10 years,” he said.
Cabrera helped convert Rae, then an Evangelical, to Catholicism. He believes God allowed him to meet and marry Rae because “He saw the bigger picture that ultimately I could become a better priest than I probably would have if I hadn’t met Rae.” In 2016, while visiting with his mother in California, Cabrera got word that Rae, 51, had died. Then the call to go back to the seminary “came out of nowhere.”
At age 56, Cabrera joined much younger seminarians in the Diocese of Des Moines. The philosophy classes were tough, he confessed, although he said he later enjoyed theology. Somehow, his dancing skills, among others, proved useful when he was interning at a parish where a fledgling youth group was suffering from high attrition. He promised the youngsters, a lot of whom were Latinos, that he would dance for them if they completed the program. The youths took the challenge and stayed. And dance the former tango maestro did.
Last year, Cabrera received the Holy Orders. His ordaining prelate, Des Moines Bishop William Joensen, incidentally, is only 11 months his senior.
Some younger priests might take a short vacation or go for further studies right after ordination. Almost immediately, Cabrera took an assignment at Corpus Christi parish in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
“A lot of married couples in my parish prefer to speak to me about their family life,” he says. “I know the problems in the bedroom. Or young people having trouble with their dating life or wanting to meet someone or being so caught up in the physical aspect of a young relationship. So I think I have something to bring to the table for them.”
Today, he goes by “Lui” in deference to his pastor, Fr. Luis Mejia, and is ever conscious of how God directs his life. “He gives me now the grace to not screw it up. Because he already knows, ‘Oh, hey, listen, you screwed it up once. Let’s not do that again.’”
