He’s The US’s Oldest Catholic Priest — And He’s Loved Every Minute Of It
He doesn’t look a day over 104.
James C. Turro turned 104 years old on Jan. 26 — and now is believed to hold the title of oldest priest in the Archdiocese of Newark — and likely the oldest Catholic cleric in all the United States.
Families from across the country, along with churchgoers and locals, turned out for a weeklong celebration concluding earlier this month. They delivered several of his favorite desserts (chocolate cake!) and participated in a special Mass where the music director played his favorite hymns and the congregation sang “Happy Birthday.”
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His long career began while he was still a boy in Jersey City. He was influenced by visiting his aunts, who were nuns, at their convent and by conversations he had with them during family holidays to pursue the priesthood.
“They were very much a factor in my formation, he told JerseyCatholic.org. “That seemed to be the thing, you know, to become a religious.”
And the permanency of a lifelong commitment to service didn’t faze him.
“I never reached a point where I stopped to think, ‘wait a minute, am I doing the right thing?’,” he added. “This is a lifelong commitment. I was never put off by that. I felt as though God wanted me to be a priest, so I went ahead with it.”
Turro was ordained a priest in 1948 and began his ministry at Holy Trinity Church in Hackensack. After two years, he enrolled at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., earning a certificate in sacred theology, followed by a certificate in sacred scripture from the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome.
Photo courtesy of Archdiocese of Newark
He later joined the faculty of Immaculate Conception Seminary at Seton Hall University in New Jersey, where he taught for 60 years and is also the university’s oldest living alumnus, according to the Archdiocese of Newark. The seminary’s library now bears his name.
Church leaders estimate that he has, over his lifetime as a priest, presided over approximately 900 baptisms and 400 weddings in Our Lady of Mercy Church in Park Ridge alone.
Although he is technically retired, he still celebrates Mass and offers pastoral counsel as needed to parishioners at the New Jersey church, where he has become a beloved figure, in part due to his very short homilies, or sermons, that are usually less than a page.
Fewer and fewer young men are following Turro’s path to the priesthood. There’s been a decades-long overall decline in the number of young Catholics deciding to devote their lives to full-time ministry.
For those who are considering it, Turro said it is totally worth it.
“I thought I’d like being a priest, but I didn’t know I would like it as much as I did when I actually put my hands to it,” he said. “And I think that’s what happens to most Catholic laymen or laywomen.
“They may wonder beforehand whether they’re going to make it, or whether they will take to [a religious vocation] or not. But when they get there, they find that there’s more than they bargained for, more than they realized they would have.”
Cassidy Grom is the managing editor of Religion Unplugged. Her award-winning reporting and digital design work have appeared in numerous publications.