Pastor Father Robert Hussey, S.J.      Contact Bob Hussey, S.J.   865.5714

As part of the regular Jesuit course of studies, Fr. Hussey spent two and half years as a student of philosophy at Loyola University in Chicago. He then joined the faculty of the ILADES/Georgetown University Graduate Program in Economics in Santiago, Chile where he served from 1994 until 1996.

Upon returning to the United States, Fr. Hussey began theology studies at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He received an M.Div. degree from Weston and was ordained to the diaconate in 1999. He then served for a year as a deacon at St. Ignatius Parish in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, while also continuing his studies of theology.

Fr. Hussey was ordained to the priesthood in Baltimore in June of 2000. For a year, he returned to North Carolina where he was a Visiting Professor of Economics at Duke University and assisting priest at St. Raphael Parish in Raleigh.

In 2001, Fr. Hussey became a regular faculty member of the Department of Economics at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. where he did research and taught in the areas of macroeconomics and econometrics. He also was involved in pastoral work on the Georgetown campus and in Spanish at the Washington, D.C. jail.

In 2006, Fr. Hussey left Georgetown to move into full-time pastoral ministry. He worked as a priest at Blessed Sacrament Parish in Hollywood, California before beginning Jesuit tertianship in Mexico. After returning to the states, Fr. Hussey was serving in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia at St. Patrick Parish in Norristown and the Misión Santa Maria in Chester County when the Maryland Provincial asked him to become acting Pastor at Holy Cross Church in Durham, North Carolina. Upon completing his term at Holy Cross, he was named Pastor of St. Raphael in 2008.

A native of Aruba, Dutch Antilles, Fr. Proterra left there after graduating from Georgetown University to start formation for the Jesuit priesthood in the United States.  In 1971 he was ordained by the Dominican bishop of the Antilles, Monsignor Michael Holterman, OP.  Father Proterra's academic credentials include a number of degrees, including a BA degree, a PhL, and several MA and PhD degrees.  His fields of study include philosophy, theology, bio-ethics, and spirituality.  He is also certified in clinical ethics by a number of medical centers around the country.  He has taught at Saint Joseph’s University, Loyola University in Maryland, Creighton University, and St. George’s College and the University of Science and Technology, both in Jamaica.

Father joined the Saint Joseph’s University Board of Trustees in 1999.  He has also served on the Board of Directors of the American Red Cross, the Jesuit Deans’ Conference, Saint Agnes Medical Center in Baltimore; and as Chairman of the Theology Department at Loyola University in Maryland and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Creighton University.  Before his time in Jamaica, he was involved in writing and community organizing with the Newman Center in Berkeley, California.  He came to St. Raphael directly from Jamaica.

Father Bruce Bavinger, S.J.       Contact Bruce Bavinger, S.J.  865.5747

Fr. Bavinger comes from Grosse Pointe, Michigan, and after graduating from Georgetown University with a major in English, he entered the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus in 1969. During his two-year novitiate, Fr. Bavinger spent three months at a Jesuit parish in Guatemala City, Guatemala. This was his first longer experience in Hispanic culture. After completing philosophy studies at Boston College, Fr. Bavinger did a two-year regency at the Nativity School in lower eastside Manhattan in New York, a school primarily for Puerto Rican children. He also studied at Columbia University in Urban Education, thinking that he would be teaching in urban areas for much of his Jesuit life. He studied theology at the Jesuit School of Theology in Chicago (now closed) and was ordained in 1978.

During theology, Fr. Bavinger was drawn to the African American experience and to ministry with adults. With that, rather than doing the teaching he had been expecting to do, he chose to work in pastoral ministries, and has been there ever since ordination. Fr. Bavinger has spent his priestly life largely in Jesuit parishes which are at least in part African American. His first parish was the Church of the Gesu in Philadelphia, where he went as part of a new team for that parish. After seven years, he became pastor of Holy Cross Catholic Church in Durham, an historically African American parish, where he spent eleven years. His next assignment was for nearly eight years as pastor of the St. Aloysius Church in Washington, D.C. . And then for the last five years, Fr. Bavinger has been in full-time Hispanic ministry, living in the diocesan parish of St. Therese in Wilson, and ministering there, in Rocky Mount and in Roanoke Rapids.

Fr. Bavinger’s return to involvement with the Hispanic community was caused in good part by the arrival around 1990 of many Hispanics, mostly Mexican, in the Durham area while he was at Holy Cross. There were no Masses being offered in Spanish at the time, and so Fr. Bavinger began working in the Hispanic community, with the assistance of the Holy Cross parishioners.

Father is available for spiritual direction, enjoys political commentary, wants to see the planet taken care of, and occasionally gets into a good poem.