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Name: Derrick Oliveira
Date of birth: December 18, 1981
Hobbies and interest: running, basketball, juggling, reading and writing poetry
Favorite saints: St. Monica, St. Augustine, St. Benedict, St. Scholastica
Born and raised in the East Bay, I spent most of my childhood in Castro Valley. Even though I was baptized a Catholic as a child, I never really practiced my faith. My life essentially revolved around my family, school and sports; my relationship with God was a mediocre one at best. Nevertheless, through the grace of the Holy Spirit, my heart was set on fire for the Lord during my final years in high school. My best friend invited me to a youth group at a local community church. It was there that I began to experience God’s galvanizing love and mercy moving in the inner depths of my soul. Taking me by the hand, Jesus guided me back to the Catholic Church. It was at my home parish of Our Lady of Grace in Castro Valley, where Father Kevin Mullins, O.S.A. introduced me to Deacon Matt Dulka. Meeting Deacon Matt on a regular basis for six months for catechesis, I was able to receive First Communion four days before I departed for the Navy in the summer of 2000.
While stationed at Naval Hospital Camp Lejeune in North Carolina as a navy corpsman, I attended R.C.I.A. classes on base at Saint Francis Xavier Church. Fr. Aiden Logan, O.C.S.O. prepared me for my Confirmation, which I received in the summer of 2002. After I was confirmed, I got involved in various parish ministries, such as lecturing, distributing communion at Mass and to patients at the naval hospital, serving as an acolyte at Mass, and being an active Fourth degree member of the Knights of Columbus. During the winter of 2003, I felt the Spirit calling me to a greater service. At that time I contacted Fr. Larry D’Anjou, the Vocation Director of the Diocese of Oakland, to gain more information on the priesthood and the process of becoming a priest. Through faithful prayer and spiritual direction (especially through the guidance of Navy Chaplain Tim Hogan of the Archdiocese of Detroit and Fr. Larry) I discerned my call to seminary.
So, after five years of military service, I began my formation as a seminarian for the Diocese of Oakland during the summer of 2005. After three years of philosophy studies at Mount Angel Seminary in Oregon, I received a phone call from Archbishop Allen Vigneron who asked me if I would like to complete my studies in Rome. I am grateful for having the opportunity to complete my theology studies in the “Eternal City.” As a seminarian at the North American College in Rome, I am able to actively participate in a program that offers me an intellectually stimulating curriculum and dedicates itself to my spiritual growth. I am also able to engage in evangelization work at the Vatican by guiding pilgrims of various faith backgrounds through the excavations under Saint Peter’s Basilica to see and pay homage to the relics of Saint Peter. I look forward to the day, God willing, when I will be a spiritual father to the people of Oakland, a spiritual father with a heart that shares in the love, compassion and warmth of the Heavenly Father, so that as one family in Christ we may be a living sign of Christ’s hope and peace.