In a quiet coastal village on the Philippine island of Bohol, a young boy once stood beside his mother during Mass and said to himself, “One day, I will be like him.”
That boy was Father Garry Bacol SVD, and he was referring to the priest at the altar.
Father Bacol, the youngest of seven children, was born into a home where his mother wove discipline and devotion into daily life. Their house had no plumbing. Each day, the children walked several kilometers to fetch water.
Responsibilities were clearly divided. Father Bacol and his identical twin brother washed the dishes. Every night, the family gathered in their mother’s room to pray the rosary. Each child took a turn leading.
“We were very disciplined at home,” he said with a smile.
Their father was a seafarer, a radio operator for a shipping company. He spent eleven months of the year between ports in Asia for every one precious month at home. When he was present, the house felt whole. When he left, the family leaned even more deeply into prayer.
Father Bacol’s mother was a pillar of faith. Every Sunday, without fail, she brought all seven children to church. It was there at about age six that Father Bacol first felt the stirring of his vocation. The priest at the altar impressed him.
Then, at age eight, came a trial that would mark him for life.
He and his twin were hospitalized with fevers of 104 degrees (Fahrenheit). Father Bacol remained in the hospital for almost a month.
As the Christmas season began, the boy felt miserable, not only from illness but from missing the joy of home and celebration.
When he expressed wanting to go home, his mother simply said, “You’ll have to pray.”
He did. He prayed a child’s prayer: “Please, Lord, please heal me so I can go back to school and go home.”
The next morning, the doctor examined him and declared a miracle. Father Bacol was healed and went home that same day.
That moment planted a quiet certainty in his heart: God listens.
Years later while he was in his third year of seminary in Manila, tragedy struck.
Somewhere on the seas between Japan and China, his father suffered a fatal heart attack at age 57. Because Manila was closer than Bohol to where the ship docked, Father Bacol waited for his father’s body to arrive in the Philippines. He accompanied him back to Bohol for burial.
In grief his calling deepened, but a vocation is rarely a straight line.
Though he had entered formation with the Society of the Divine Word (SVD), he left for a time. He was young. For a little more than a year, he worked as a hotel secretary, had a salary, a girlfriend and structure. Outwardly, life seemed stable, yet something was missing, he said.
Passing the sacristy of a cathedral one day, he felt an unexpected peace, a fullness he had not found elsewhere.
Father Bacol returned to the seminary, completed the studies and was ordained to the priesthood.
After ordination, he was assigned to a mission in Argentina. For 14 years, he lived in this new world with a new language, new culture and new challenges.
As a missionary priest, he learned quickly that you do everything, he said. In his case, he was called upon to celebrate Mass, bury the dead, comfort the grieving, teach catechism, organize youth activities and administer parishes. He served in parishes in Mendoza, Buenos Aires and Jujuy.
In Jujuy in northern Argentina, his missionary heart was stretched even further. The region is multicultural, rich with Bolivian traditions and indigenous practices, such as Carnival celebrations, the symbolic “waking of the devil,” and the August rituals honoring Pachamama, Mother Earth.
Rather than reject these pagan practices outright, Father Bacol sought discernment. With his bishop’s guidance, he helped integrate cultural expressions into Catholic faith in a way that pointed always back to God as Creator.
He established a new tradition. Before any ritual, the chapel grounds had to be cleaned and trees planted. In doing so, he called upon the parishioners to praise God with actions.
Father Bacol gently set boundaries too. He stopped celebrating Mass in private homes to foster deeper communal identity.
“We don’t eat in bed; we go to the dining room,” he explained. “Catholic means universal. We gather as one.”
Father Bacol expressed excitement about his new assignment.
“As missionary,” he said, “you go where you are called. You entrust everything to God’s providence.”
As one of the newest members of the Chicago Province, Father Bacol is on the pastoral team that serves Our Lady of Guadalupe in Lakewood, N.J.
The parish offers multiple weekend Masses in Spanish, English and Polish. They typically celebrate around 50 weddings a year; hundreds of baptisms, First Communions and Confirmations; and numerous Quinceañeras.
Father Bacol said he especially looks forward to working with young adults who seek spiritual direction between Confirmation and marriage.
He found in this immigrant community the same deep religiosity he had known in Bohol and Jujuy—a faith expressed in pilgrimage, sacrifice, food shared in thanksgiving and devotion to the Blessed Mother.
He often returns in memory to that small house without plumbing, to the long walks for water, rosaries prayed in his mother’s room, his seafarer father who crossed oceans and a Christmas prayer whispered by an eight-year-old boy longing to go home.
Across continents—from Bohol to Buenos Aires to New Jersey—Father Garry Bacol carries that same simple prayer in his heart: “Lord, use me.”