People We Got To Know in August 2026

Bishop William Byrne has a way of making a room lighter, and he traces the reason back to gratitude. Live out of gratitude, he says, and you start to realize that everything is a gift and you stop taking yourself nearly so seriously. It is the closest thing he has to a philosophy, and it turns up in almost everything he does.

Warm and quick with a joke, he is the kind of pastor people did not want to give up. Someone who worked alongside him at his last parish said that if he wants to, he can make a joke out of every other sentence, and in the same breath described a man whose affection for his parishioners was obvious to anyone watching. He grew up in Washington, D.C., the youngest of eight children, the son of a heart surgeon and a mother who kept a full house running. His parents were daily communicants who were also, in his telling, fun people who laughed a lot, and he still calls his childhood a happy one. He was the gregarious one in the family, the kind of child other households wanted around. One Christmas morning a friend's mother called and asked if he could come over, because her own house had gone quiet and she thought he might lift the mood. His mother said no.

Priesthood was never a strange idea in that house. His uncle, Fr. John Byrne, was a priest in New York, a Renaissance man by the family's telling who played semi-pro football and loved poetry, and having him around made the seminary feel like an ordinary thing to consider. He could be a doctor like his father or a priest like his uncle. When his uncle died during Byrne's college years, he spoke for the family at the funeral, and the cardinal who celebrated the Mass told him afterward that they had to sign this guy up for the priesthood. It had already been in the back of his mind. He taught Latin at his old grade school for a few years first, then studied in Rome, and was ordained for the Archdiocese of Washington.

His ministry since has kept putting him in front of people working out what to do with their lives. There were eight years as a chaplain at the University of Maryland, a parish on Capitol Hill where he gathered Catholic members of Congress for conversation and prayer, and nine years teaching seminarians how to preach, where his advice came down to three things: be brief, be sincere, and be seated. He believes in precision, in shooting one arrow rather than fifty, and that same instinct is what made Five Things work, the column and video series that goes looking for God in ordinary life. The call telling him he had been named a bishop reached him on the feast of the Guardian Angels. His first thought was a joke, that his own guardian angel must have been asleep on the job, until he remembered that guardian angels do not sleep. What he was being handed, he decided, was a gift. He arrived in western Massachusetts having filled his search history with the names of the four counties now in his care, telling people that if they wanted to find him, they probably would not find him behind a desk.

There is a lighter side he makes no effort to hide. As a boy he made a murder mystery movie out of clips of his own family, and he never quite lost the instinct for a camera. He picks up languages for the pleasure of it, Spanish, French, and Italian. He is bald, and he has firm opinions about men who wear baseball caps indoors. He travels with Zelie, a black lab named for the mother of St. Thérèse, who waits at the back of the church during Mass and turns up in most of the photos afterward, because people are drawn to the dog, he says, and it makes the bishop seem a little more human. The saints tell the rest. He met Mother Teresa once as a seminarian, and out of a whole line of them she stopped in front of him and said, "Don't get in God's way." He still does not know why she said it to him and no one else, but he has tried to make it a rule ever since. He is drawn as well to St. Thérèse and her little way, on the grounds that it is hard to be anything but small before God. And when the time came to choose a motto, he chose the words he keeps returning to, In Spem Vivam, into a living hope.

Bishop James Ruggieri says that if you hear people's stories, you can understand them better. It is a simple enough thing to say, and a much harder thing to arrange a life around, but he has done it, and almost everything about him makes more sense once you know that closeness is the point.

Warm, soft-spoken, and quick to smile, he is the kind of man people describe by how they feel in his company rather than by anything on his record. Humble is the word that comes up first, followed closely by authentic, and by the observation from more than one person that a conversation with him tends to leave you calmer than it found you. He has also never lived far from where he began. He grew up in Barrington, Rhode Island, the youngest of four boys, went through the public schools there, studied at Providence College, and was ordained for the Diocese of Providence in 1995. Rhode Island, as he puts it, has been his home since birth, which means that for most of his life the people he served were the people he had always lived among.

More than twenty of those years he gave to St. Patrick's in inner-city Providence, and that parish is the clearest picture of him there is. English and Spanish share the pews there, along with families from Latin America and from Burundi and Rwanda, and instead of waiting for his neighbors to come to him in a language he already had, he learned Spanish so he could go to them in theirs. He later took on a second, largely Latino parish nearby. And when the parish elementary school could no longer keep its doors open, the ordinary thing would have been to let those families find their schooling somewhere else. He kept them instead, opening a high school in the same building in 2009, with no set tuition, where parents pay whatever they can manage and most pay very little, and he still walks into a classroom to teach theology himself whenever there is a gap to fill.

He has never been much good at handing a need over to someone else, which is roughly how he came to spend years driving a food truck around Providence. It began with a parishioner's suggestion one November, that they might bring meals out to the homeless the day after Thanksgiving. He said yes, and what started as a single afternoon quietly turned into years of them. On Friday and Sunday afternoons he would drive the parish's old white truck to three stops around the city and hand hot food, coffee and warm clothes through the window himself, a line from Matthew's Gospel painted along the side. He came to know the people who came well enough to pick up a conversation weeks after it had stopped, as ready to talk about music as about God. He has been honest about how much of it he could not fix, particularly for those caught in addiction, and about feeling helpless standing in front of it. What he could offer was a meal, his attention, and the promise that he would be back on Friday.

Nothing in the way he was living suggested a man positioning himself to become a bishop. The call came anyway, on a Saturday afternoon in February 2024, about five minutes before he was due to say Mass. He said yes, went upstairs and celebrated it, and admitted later that his first thought had been how big this was, and that he was only a pastor, taking what comfort he could in the fact that he had not known how to be a pastor either until he started being one. Maine is an entire state, and a man whose whole method is being present now has all of it to cover, so he has spent his time since driving it and meeting the people in it. The motto he chose belongs to the same devotion that was already painted on the side of that old truck, Auspice Maria, under the protection of Mary. And when he speaks about the priests and the people now in his care, he does not describe them as a diocese he was handed. He is not on the outside, he says. He is on the inside with them.

Bishop John McDermott has spent his whole priesthood inside one state, and he says he has loved nearly every assignment it handed him. More than three decades in, he still speaks about the people and the scenery of Vermont like someone who keeps finding new things to notice, north to south and east to west.

Steady and unassuming, he leads the way he once described it himself, collaborative and encouraging, more inclined to let capable people do their jobs well than to assume he already has every answer. That temperament was shaped early. He was born on the Feast of St. Joseph, the seventh of ten children, and grew up in a home where his parents' faith was simply part of the air, the place he learned to pray and to trust God in whatever came. The priesthood did not announce itself all at once. He spent a year at the Coast Guard Academy first, discovered he got badly seasick, and found his faith deepening on a chaplain's retreat. The turn came quietly one day as he watched a submarine make its way up the Thames River, when he felt a strong sense that he needed to consider the priesthood.

What followed was a life lived almost entirely inside one diocese. Ordained in Burlington in 1989, he moved through parishes and chaplaincies and years of quieter work behind the scenes at the chancery, until he could say he had set foot in all but two churches in the whole of Vermont. He came to believe you should hold your assignments loosely, that clinging to one too tightly can close you off to what the next might bring, and he seems to have lived that out. When Pope Francis named him the 11th Bishop of Burlington in 2024, he was already the diocese's own administrator, and his reaction, he admitted, was equal parts surprise and relief. Surprise at the office, and relief that it was for the diocese he already knew and loved.

For all the offices he has held over the years, what refuels him is refreshingly ordinary. He is a runner and a golfer, a baker and a cook, the kind of man who finds a quiet satisfaction in weeding the flower beds outside the chancery or fixing something around the house, and who took up skiing again not long ago. He is the first to admit he has never been much good at taking a regular day off, a habit he is careful not to recommend to his priests, but give him a few hours outside and he comes back renewed. Now he expects to spend most weekends on the road, parish to parish, determined that the people in the farthest corners of the state, especially down south, know they belong to the same church as everyone else. Ask him what all of it is for, and the answer is plain. His motto is that God alone suffices, and what he most hopes for is a Vermont where more people have come to know Christ for themselves.

Father Javier Barreto is the kind of priest who feeds people, and he means it in every sense. Before he ever wore a collar, he was a chef, cooking for the Hyatt hotel chain, and one of his brothers likes to say his parishioners will never go hungry and never be sad.

He grew up in Manatí, Puerto Rico, the fourth of five children, in a home he describes as Catholic more by name than by practice. Even so, something in him leaned toward the altar early. He was serving Mass by the age of eight, and after an uncle told him he looked like a little priest, the family started teasing him with it. He went to everything the church had going, and when he had no ride, he simply walked.

The call did not come quickly. His career was going well and he was happy, he says, but there was always something missing. A priest noticed him praying alone before the Blessed Sacrament one Holy Thursday and asked whether he had ever thought about the priesthood. He said no and, by his own account, kind of ran away, though the question kept following him. When he finally told his family, his father asked him three times if he was sure. Soon after, his father, who had long kept the faith at arm's length, made his confession and came home to the Church, not long before Barreto lost him. He entered St. John Vianney Seminary in 2006 and was ordained for the Archdiocese of Miami in 2015, serving in Miami parishes before he came to Hollywood.

Today he leads Little Flower Parish, a warm community of about a thousand families, half of them Hispanic, that traces its roots back a hundred years to the little French saint it is named for, Therese of Lisieux. Barreto arrived as the parish neared its centennial, and he speaks about the milestone with real gratitude, calling it a privilege to build up what he inherited for the generations still to come. He has leaned into what he loves most, working with young people, the elderly, and the sick, offering Mass in both English and Spanish, and opening the church for adoration during the week.

For all of it, the chef in him never really left. He still seems to measure a good day by whether the people in front of him have been fed, at the altar and at the table both, and he still hopes to be, as he once put it, an instrument to bring people back, like his dad.

Fr. David Pantaleón is the kind of priest who never seems to be reaching for attention. People who have watched him work describe a gentle, measured man, fair and sensitive, someone who would rather stand quietly beside a person in trouble than say much about it.

He was born in Salcedo, in the Dominican Republic, has spent his life in the Society of Jesus, and along the way has kept up a quieter craft as a musician who writes and records his own music. That life has been tested more than once. In 2017 he was sent to Cuba to lead the Jesuits on the island, during some of the hardest years many Cubans could remember. For five years he walked with religious communities and ordinary families, and he did not look away from the people suffering around him. He stood with prisoners and with their families, and when he was asked to soften his voice and let it go, he would not. His permission to stay was eventually not renewed, and he had to leave the island where he had spent those five years.

He speaks about all of it without bitterness. "We cannot close our eyes and look the other way," he once wrote. "It is not about who is right or wrong. It is about things as simple as the right to live, to express what one thinks, to discuss differences without demonizing the opposite opinion, to respect the dignity of all." That belief is the heart of how he understands his work, and it has followed him into every place he has served.

Today his path has brought him to Gesú Catholic Parish in downtown Miami, the oldest Catholic parish in the city and a church that has welcomed generations of Cuban and immigrant families through its doors. It is a fitting home for a Dominican Jesuit who was sent away from Cuba for standing so close to its people. He came to Gesú as pastor in 2023, and the man who leads the congregation now is the same one the Cuban press once captured in a single line, a priest who does not seek the spotlight and simply tries to stay near the people who need him.

Fr. José Alvarez is happiest with people around him. Over more than two decades as a priest he has served in a lot of places and never picked a favorite. They are all good, he likes to say, as long as there are people in them. He believes a priest should be, in his own words, a regular guy, and that what gives the faith its credibility is not what you do but how you relate to people. His whole spirituality he sums up in a single phrase: finding the extraordinary in the ordinary.

He came to the priesthood the long way around. Born in Havana, he arrived in Miami as a young boy in 1967 with his parents and his older sister, and he grew up there. Before the collar, he lived a couple of other lives. He spent about a decade as an actor and director on stage, in commercials, and in film, the blink-and-you'll-miss-me kind of roles, as he puts it, and then fifteen years teaching and coaching at the Catholic schools he had once attended. He entered the seminary at thirty-six and was ordained in 2003. He did not become a priest because he was unhappy in either life. He loved teaching and coaching. He simply felt called, and felt he needed to be freer to give himself fully to the work.

Away from the parish, he is a devoted Marlins fan. On a day off, if they are playing, there is a good chance he is at the ballpark, and he is not shy about it. He plays a twelve-string guitar, and during the pandemic he and a fellow priest recorded a gentle version of the Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun" that unexpectedly went viral, much to the amusement of a man who happily admits he is lucky he knows how to use a cell phone. His taste in music surprises people, too: by his own description, he is probably the only Cuban who listens to American folk and bluegrass. For years he has quietly helped build bridges between Cuban Catholics on the island and those in exile, work he describes as helping the two communities understand one another and heal old wounds. For all the places he has stood and the different lives he has lived, it comes back to something simple. He just likes being around people.

Fr. José Luis Menéndez is the kind of priest who would rather trust people to do the work than do it for them. For more than three decades in a long-overlooked corner of Miami, that has been his way, believing in people until they start to believe in themselves. "The first thing you have to do," he says, "is believe that they can do it."

He was born in Havana in 1947 and was twelve when his family left as Castro's revolution took hold. What was supposed to be six months away turned into twenty years in Spain, and it was there, on a retreat as a teenager, that he knew he wanted to be a priest. He was ordained in Madrid in 1977 and came to Miami hoping to serve his fellow Cuban exiles.

The Lord, he likes to say, had a sense of humor about that, because Miami handed him just about everyone except Cubans. In 1988 he took over Corpus Christi, a struggling parish in one of the poorest zip codes in the country. Instead of waiting for a scattered neighborhood to come to him, he went out to it, turning one church into six small missions, one for each pocket of the community. He was reaching the edges of the city long before anyone called it that, and he became a voice for those streets too, showing people who had felt powerless that they could speak up and be heard.

Away from the streets and the missions, there is a quieter side of him that loves beauty. Over the years he has gathered one of the largest collections of colonial religious art and historical records in the country, kept in a church-museum he built on the parish grounds. For him it is not a hobby but part of the same calling. He believes beauty and history can reach people in a way a sermon cannot, and that a poor neighborhood surrounded by both slowly stops seeing itself as poor. And still, he waves off the credit for any of it. "What I have done," he says, "is allow people to do it and discover what they can do."