PRAYER REQUEST
Your prayer needs are very important to us. The Prayer Line Ministry will keep you in their prayers.
WAYS TO GIVE
Your contribution to our Church will be an enduring symbol of your faith and devotion, and will benefit the St. John Baptist Church now, at its inception, and for years to come.
Fr. Hildebrand was born and raised in Connecticut. He attended high school and junior college at St. Thomas Seminary in the Hartford area. After spending a year and half in Wyoming (Jackson Hole), he came to California in 1974 to attend Thomas Aquinas College. After graduating in 1978, he taught briefly in a private school; he entered the religious life the following year. He was ordained in 1984 and was assigned to Our Lady Chapel in downtown Los Angeles. In 1991 he began a ten-year assignment as associate pastor, then pastor, at St. Francis of Assisi parish in Los Angeles. In 2001, he transferred to Our Lady of Guadalupe parish in Santa Paula. After a period of spiritual discernment he decided to transfer to St. Michael's Norbertine Abbey on El Toro Rd near Lake Forest in 2003. The following year he was assigned to St. John the Baptist as parochial vicar. He became pastor in July 2005.
Father Philip Smith is a native of Orange County. After growing up in the midwest, he returned to Orange County to join the Norbertine Order in 1977. He was ordained in 1984, and taught high school for 14 years before entering full-time parish ministry. Besides his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Theology from the Angelicum University in Rome, he also earned a B.A. at Cal State Fullerton, with a Music Education major and an English minor. He has been at St. John the Baptist since 2002; his main responsibility is Hispanic Ministry. Fr. Philip's favorite forms of recreation are reading and music.
Father Norbert entered the Norbertine Order at St. Michael's Abbey in 1975 and was ordained a priest in 1981. He received his BA in Theology from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome in 1980 and completed three years of liturgical studies at the Pontifical Liturgical Institute of Sant'Anselmo in Rome in 1985. He received his Master's degree in Education Administration from the University of San Francisco in 2002. He has spent fifteen years in high school education, as teacher (St. Michael's Prep, Mater Dei High School, Mary Star of the Sea High School), principal (Mary Star of the Sea High School, San Pedro) and rector (Mary Star of the Sea High School). Fr. Norbert is currently the Rector of our parish school. He is a great fan of J.R.R. Tolkien and loves to read anything with a historical slant in his free time. He conducts retreats for priests, religious and laity in the US and abroad and is a popular speaker on the book and movie, The Da Vinci Code.
In Residence.
