St. Joseph Catholic Church

Dennis Berry
Pastor

Fr. Dennis Berry, S.T. was born in Washington, DC and raised in the DC metropolitan area in Virginia and Maryland. When he was an adolescent, he lived near the Missionary Servant’s seminary in Silver Spring, Maryland and met Fr. Lawrence Brediger, S.T., who had helped his mother when she was critically ill and not expected to live. Since he had had considered a vocation to the priesthood from the time he was a little boy and had met so many wonderful Missionary Servants along the way, it seemed like a natural step to enter their minor seminary in Monroe, Virginia, as a high school freshman. Since his ordination in 1974, Father Dennis has served in many capacities, including: a missionary outreach program on the streets of East Los Angeles; regional vocation director for thirteen states in the south; pastoral associate at Ascension parish in South Central Los Angeles; the first director of our House of Studies in Santa Ana, California (and while there received a Ph.D. in spiritual theology from the Union Institute). For ten years, he was the international spiritual guide of the Missionary Cenacle Apostolate, the lay community founded by our own founder, Fr. Judge. He was the US national vocation director for the Congregation; director of the Father Judge Apostolic Center, a center for missionary development of young adults in Stirling, NJ (while there he helped to begin the migrant ministry of the Paterson, New Jersey diocese). Fr. Dennis was elected to the General Council in 2007; in addition to that responsibility, he also is currently the pastor of St. Joseph parish in Ft. Mitchell, Alabama.