Vocations video highlights diversity

By Bill Doyle | CFP Correspondent

WORCESTER – When Father Donato Infante III asked Dominic Porcaro to appear as a young man who becomes a priest in a vocation video last spring for the Diocese of Worcester, he wasn’t sure at first if he wanted to do it.
Mr. Porcaro, then a senior at St. Paul Diocesan Junior/Senior High School, had no plans to enter the priesthood and he hadn’t acted in anything since his eighth-grade school play. But it didn’t take him long to decide to grant the request of Father Infante, the director of the Worcester Diocese’s Office for Vocations and the St. Paul chaplain, and he’s glad he did.
“I’ve never done anything like that before,” he said. “So to have the opportunity was really cool.”
The video was filmed at St. Joan of Arc Church in June. It opens with Mr. Porcaro sitting alone in church and contemplating his future and it ends with him wearing clerical vestments and smiling.
Mr. Porcaro doesn’t speak in the two-minute, nine-second video. Only the narrator does. But he is the focus of the diocese’s first vocation video and he hopes he can inspire others to enter the priesthood.
“I never thought I’d have such an impact on someone’s life like that,” he said. “Even if it affects just one person, that would be a really cool experience. Whether it affects one, or 10 or 20 or more.”
Mr. Porcaro, 18, is a freshman at Bryant University in Rhode Island. He was confirmed at Our Lady of Mount Carmel-Our Lady of Loreto Parish.
Appearing in a video was a different sort of challenge for Mr. Porcaro, who accomplished a lot in high school. At St. Paul, he served as class co-president and received the inaugural St. Paul Knights Award for demonstrating lifelong learning, servant leadership and Christian virtue, and representing the best attributes of the student body.
He also played offensive guard, tight end and outside linebacker for the football team. He’s only 5-foot-7, 160 pounds, but he focused on his footwork and technique to overcome his lack of size.
He had been class president for three years at Holy Name Central Catholic Junior/Senior High School before the school merged with St. Peter-Marian Central Catholic Junior/Senior High School. 
Luke Neri, who was co-president of the senior class after serving as class president at St. Peter-Marian, also appeared in the video, but did not become a priest. He’s a freshman at Providence College.
Malaki Brown and John Lopes, both of whom graduated from St. Paul last spring, also become priests in the video.
“That’s why they look so young in the video,” Father Infante said, “because they’re all high school seniors.”
Soon after Father Infante became director of the vocation office in the summer of 2019, a few priests and seminarians in the Worcester Diocese sent him a vocation video produced by the Diocese of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They urged him to have one made.
Last December, Father Infante contacted Spirit Juice Studios, the Chicago production firm that created the video in Milwaukee, and he told them what Bishop McManus had told him when he became vocation director.
“The purpose of the video,” he said, “was to show that we have a very ethnically diverse diocese and vocations come from all these different communities.”
The cost of flying the video equipment from Chicago proved to be prohibitive until Father Infante learned that the Diocese of Providence also planned to make a vocation video with Spirit Juice. So the Worcester and Providence dioceses split the cost of transporting the equipment. To reduce costs even more the video was made in only one day, a weekday last June.
Cody Hilliard, the creative lead who guided the production in Worcester, admitted shooting everything in one day was a challenge, but he was proud that he and his three crew members were able to do it.
“I don’t have a particular insight into how well these (vocation videos) work,” he said. “What I do know is that they make people smile. I think at the end of the day, that’s what I’m shooting for.”
“I’m very pleased with how it came out for one day of filming,” Father Infante said.
Mr. Hilliard and his crew also worked on the project for two weeks before the shoot and two weeks afterward. They’ve shot a handful of vocation videos this year.
“This was different because it was trying to target a broader demographic,” Mr. Hilliard said, “and this project never felt pigeonholed, it felt like they were trying to reach out to new people and new faces, and really try to spread the faith in a unique way.”
Father Infante asked Father Hugo Cano, director of the Hispanic/Latino Ministry, and Father Enoch K. Kyeremateng, chaplain of the African Ministry, to appear in the video and to recruit people in their communities to become involved as well.
Father Kyeremateng is one of five African priests in the diocese and one of two from Ghana. He said he was touched when Father Infante asked him to become a part of the video.
“For me, being part of this video from the African perspective,” he said, “shows the young Africans that the vocation to the priesthood is universal. It doesn’t matter where you come from.”
Father Infante had input in the script and even made a cameo appearance in the video, appearing as a lay person at confession.
“It’s like, you know how in all the Marvel movies how (Marvel Comics writer) Stan Lee has a cameo, it’s kind of like that,” he said with a laugh.
The video was filmed at St. Joan of Arc Church because it’s a multi-ethnic parish that offers English, Spanish and African Masses. 
“To make everyone think, ‘Hey, I could be a priest. I could be an Italian priest. I could be a Brazilian priest,’” Mr. Porcaro said, “it’s just cool to send that message out there to anyone and everyone.”
Father Cano appeared in the video as a pastor that Mr. Porcaro visits in his office. One of 18 priests in the diocese from Colombia, he expects the video will be especially helpful in attracting priests from the African, Brazilian, Spanish and Vietnamese communities in the Worcester area.
“It creates opportunities,” he said, “for many to see that we are different communities here and that vocations need to be brought from those communities.”
The title of the video is “Revelation 7:9,” a Bible verse that explains that God loves people of every tribe, every tongue and every nation.
The video concludes with people stating, “Come follow me,” in several languages, including Vietnamese, Polish and Portuguese.
Father Infante plans to show the video at presentations he gives to young men considering the priesthood.
Mr. Porcaro was happy to have helped Father Infante.
“He does a great job,” he said. “He’s always talking to people and he always has a smile on his face. He’s always doing something.”
The video has been posted since Sept. 13 on the vocation office’s website, www.worcestervocations.com. It can also be viewed on YouTube at https://youtu.be/HS0xXKNANk8.