‘Team Worcester’: FOCUS missionaries to serve those 
of college age

By Bill Doyle
CFP Correspondent

When Father Derek Mobilio met last month in Florida with the four FOCUS missionaries who will serve at Worcester State University and Quinsigamond Community College this coming school year, he was very impressed.

“The short answer is they’re on fire,” Father Mobilio said. “Each of them in their own way has met Christ in a way that has changed their lives.”

You could say that the FOCUS missionaries are “focused” on spreading the Gospel and they are enthusiastic about changing the lives of others for the better.

FOCUS missionaries are generally recent college graduates.

“They’re going to enter into students’ lives and invite them into a relationship with Christ,” Father Mobilio.

“If Christ’s heart burns for souls on campuses in the Diocese of Worcester,” said Parker Staub, one of the four missionaries, “then ours are indeed on fire for them too, which is a reminder of what our Lord himself said, ‘I have come to set the earth on fire and how I wish it were already blazing.’”

The FOCUS vision for missionary discipleship is “Win, Build, Send.” The missionaries try to win over students for Christ, build them as disciples and send them out to do the same.

“The goal is not just to have the four missionaries doing outreach and evangelization, but to train students to do it too,” said Father Donato Infante, director of the Office for Vocations and Holy Name of Jesus House of Studies. “FOCUS calls this ‘spiritual multiplication’ because over several years you’ll go from having four Bible studies to eight Bible studies to 16 Bible studies.”

Father Mobilio, the associate pastor at Our Lady of Hope Parish in Grafton, provides priestly oversight for the missionaries, praying with them and offering Masses and support. Father Infante asked him to get to know the missionaries for a few days in June while they received their formations at Ave Maria University in Ave Maria, Fla.

FOCUS missionaries worked at Assumption University from the fall of 2019 through this past school year. According to Deacon Paul Covino, director of Campus Ministry at Assumption, “the initial funding that covered the annual fee to FOCUS ran out after five years, and we decided to focus on rebuilding the Campus Ministry staff to serve our students.”

FOCUS missionaries have served at WPI since the fall of 2020. Father Alfredo Porras, the diocese’s director of the Office for Divine Worship, is the chaplain at WPI and he raises funds to help cover the expenses for the missionaries.

This year, FOCUS missionaries will serve at WSU and QCC for the first time. The Worcester Diocese is calling those missionaries “Team Worcester.” A year ago, WSU informed Father Infante of a desire to reinstate a campus ministry so he and Father Mobilio began rotating celebrating Sunday Mass in the Seven Hills Conference Room in Wasylean Hall and they offered Bible studies. WSU students also attended Bible studies run by the missionaries at WPI and Assumption and expressed interest in welcoming missionaries on their own campus.

A QCC dean told Father Infante that students there were interested in also attending a Bible study so starting this fall they will be able to do so on their campus.

Staub, 23, of Gettysburg, Pa., is the team leader of the four missionaries. After graduating from George Washington University in 2022, he spent a year and a half as a FOCUS missionary at multiple campuses in the Archdiocese of Boston. He’s looking forward to serving as a missionary in Worcester.

“There is absolutely a unique opportunity to transform the culture of an entire city,” he said, “through these two particular campuses which are home to many students who commute back to their family home and will be bringing the Gospel and changed life back home to their families and home parishes.”

The other Team Worcester missionaries are: Andrew Thompson from the University of Pittsburgh, Kate Knesek from the University of Delaware and Julia Lopez from the University of North Texas. None are from the Worcester Diocese.

At training in Florida, missionaries are assigned to campuses by the regional director. Anthony Riopel of Paxton was assigned as a FOCUS missionary at Bridgewater State University.

The four missionaries will arrive in Worcester in early August and they will live in the former convent for the Assumption School and the Our Lady of the Assumption Parish in Millbury.

Father Infante said the four missionaries will focus on WSU and QCC, but will be available for all college aged men and women in Worcester for Bible studies and outreach. Father Donato said a Fitchburg State University student has already asked if she could take part in the Bible studies. The men and women do not have to be college students to attend.

“It’s hard for young adults to find a Catholic community,” Father Infante said. “So I don’t want to exclude those who have chosen to go straight into the workforce although FOCUS specializes in college ministry.”

The missionaries and the FOCUS national office fundraise for the salaries and expenses of the missionaries, and the Worcester Diocese pays $17,500 for the training of each of the four missionaries at Ave Maria University, including their housing, meals and flying in speakers.
Donations towards those training expenses can be made at neworcester.org/worcester.state. Donations for the missionaries at WPI can be made at neworcester.org/wpi. Donors could also contact Father Infante at director@worcestervocations.com or 508-630-4473.

Assumption and WPI students have joined the missionaries in Bible studies, summer programs, retreats and the annual FOCUS conference.

More than 19,000 students, including close to 40 from the Worcester Diocese, attended the FOCUS SEEK24 conference in St. Louis in January.

Father Mobilio and Father Infante credited FOCUS missionaries with being able to connect better than priests with students because they’re basically the same age.

WPI missionaries took students rock climbing and played cornhole and spikeball with them.  

“I find working with them to be a real delight,” Father Infante said. “They’re full of joy and they love our Lord a lot. Every FOCUS missionary spends an hour a day in Eucharistic adoration. So they’re very faithful and they’re able to go and minister to students in a way that I can’t.”

Since FOCUS was launched in January of 1998 at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, more 1,200 people who attended the Bible studies have entered seminary or religious life nationwide. As vocation director, Father Infante would like FOCUS students in the Worcester Diocese to enter the priesthood. It hasn’t happened yet, but Worcester Diocese seminarian Brian James twice participated in FOCUS summer projects and Father Infante said several students from the diocese who are involved with FOCUS have discussed with him the possibility of applying to seminary upon graduation.

FOCUS is not all about recruiting priests, however. Studies show that only 20 percent of those raised in the Catholic faith will continue to practice as adults, but 80 percent of those involved with FOCUS will.

“We need good and faithful lawyers and doctors,” Father Mobilio said. “We need good and faithful teachers, landscapers, whatever people are going to do with their lives.”

Over the years, FOCUS has grown from two missionaries on one college campus to more than 970 missionaries on over 232 campuses and other locations across the nation and to eight international locations. FOCUS can now add WSU and QCC to the list.

“I actually have very high expectations,” Father Infante said.