NOTE: This was posted today on OUR NEWS by Berthony McDermott
NASSAU, Bahamas, April 7, 2024 — A millennial Catholic priest shares his journey in the priesthood, from youth ministry to visiting the sick. He also finds time for himself.
Father Devereaux King is the youngest priest in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese. He was ordained into the priesthood less than a year ago.
King serves at St. Francis Xavier Cathedral which he says has a well-integrated mix of younger and older parishioners. He says that in his homilies, he finds creative ways to connect the two generations.
As a millennial priest, he says he often uses examples from comic books and connects them with his sermons.
He oversees youth ministry and alter ministry and is tasked with visiting and praying with sick members.
With all he has going on with frontline ministry, Father King says he’s found balance.
King had this bit of advice for others who may find themselves on a similar path:
BAHAMAS CHRONICLE EDITOR’S NOTE: I absolutely had to share this OUR NEWS post by Berthony McDermott with readers of my Washington, D.C. – based online publication, BAHAMAS CHRONICLE, which has a huge following among the Bahamian diaspora across the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom as well as in The Bahamas and the wider Caribbean.
Father King’s mother is Leonardette Ross King, daughter of the late Sylvia Elliott Ross, who was the eldest of seven grandchildren who grew up at Staniard Creek, Andros, with our grandparents, Ben and Mabel Elliott. In addition to myself, the other five grandchildren were my late sister, Elthreada Brown McPhee; cousins Agnes, Beryl and John, children of Uncle Israel “Lee” Elliott; and my late cousin Alphonso “Boogaloo” Elliott, a son of my Uncle Audley Elliott.
Although Sylvia Elliott Ross was my first cousin, I grew up calling her Aunt Sylvia because she and Papa and Mama’s youngest daughter, Maria Elliott Forbes, were around the same age and they grew up like sisters. Both were very instrumental in steering my life in the right direction during those formative years when young minds are so impressionable and vulnerable to inculcating life-long bad habits.
The younger grandchildren were indeed fortunate to have two very gifted and imaginative persons like Aunt Sylvia and Aunt Maria as mentors and guiding lights growing up in the 1940s and 1950s on the Western Ridge of Staniard Creek. Both were “monitors” at Staniard Creek All-Age School, which meant that the younger grandchildren like myself had the benefit of two “teachers” living in the same house with us. They both ended up with teaching as their life-long careers
