My name is Vincent Castaldi, 29 years old, and I was raised in both Yonkers and the Bronx. My parents are Lynn and Carlo. I have a twin brother, Christopher, and an older sister, Nicole. And we have a family dog named Mika!
I attended Salesian High School in New Rochelle. Upon graduating in 2010, I attended Loyola University of Maryland in Baltimore. I graduated summa cum laude with a BA in Philosophy and Theology. During my junior year at Loyola, I studied abroad at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Leuven, Belgium. After graduating from Loyola in 2014, I returned to Leuven and earned an MA of Philosophy in 2015.
Subsequently, I discerned whether the Lord was calling me to the Society of Jesus and entered the Jesuit novitiate in 2015 for the Irish Province. I lived in an international novitiate for Northwest Europe in Birmingham, England. As a novice, I had the opportunity to serve and minister across eight countries in various capacities including education, L’Arche, housing and immigration advocacy, spiritual and prayer accompaniment, hospital and school chaplaincies, homeless outreach, food pantries, inter-religious dialogue, and parish ministry. In 2018 I left the Jesuit novitiate and returned to the United States.
From 2018 through 2019, I was a Seton Teaching Fellow at Brilla College Prep Middle School in the South Bronx, where I co-taught English Language Arts and taught Catechesis to 5thgraders. I also was part of a team of catechists and educators that created a new, rigorous curriculum for catechesis for elementary and middle school aged students. At the end of the school year, I was accepted as a seminarian for the Archdiocese of New York and was sent to major seminary at Theological College, the national seminary at the Catholic University of America, in Washington, D.C. I recently completed my second year of theology at Catholic University. My two apostolic experiences in the capitol were working at a food pantry through Catholic Charities and organizing/managing and teaching for the R.C.I.A. program at Catholic University.
My personal interests include walking, photography, traveling, literature, philosophy, art and culture, and learning new languages.
For the Pastoral Experience Year at I.H.M., I am very much looking forward to learning from you, the people of God in the parish, and being available to you in any way, especially in the R.C.I.A. program and at the Liturgies. I am also deeply appreciative of another opportunity to accompany people in hospital ministry where I will be assigned on Wednesdays in St. Joseph’s Medical Center, Yonkers.