Argentine diocese gets new priest after nine years

After nine years without priestly ordinations, the Diocese of Alto Valle de Río Negro in Argentina celebrated the ordination of Fr Alexis Oser (pic), May 1.

May 26, 2023

By Julieta Villar
After nine years without priestly ordinations, the Diocese of Alto Valle de Río Negro in Argentina celebrated the ordination of Fr Alexis Oser (pic), May 1.

Bishop Alejandro Benna of Alto Valle presided over the ordination ceremony, which took place at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in General Roca, the city where the new priest will carry out his ministry.

The last ordination for the diocese was that of Fr Vicente Alberto Bó in 2014, who died in 2021 from COVID-19. 27-year-old Oser’s mother works in a hospital as an orderly and his father is retired from the oil industry. He has two siblings, and although his background is Catholic, his family was not practising the faith.

Speaking with the Rio Negro portal, the young priest acknowledged that his vocation “was born in the missions and among the sick” and that “it’s a gift, a gift from God.”

“One simply has to open up to that grace, to be available,” he said.

Born in the city of Catriel, at age seven he began to attend Missionary Childhood (a worldwide organisation of Catholic youth) in a poor neighbourhood of his town.

That experience — as well as meeting a nun named Nieves — made an impact on his life. He was just a boy when he began to “know Jesus and call him a friend,” Oser recounted.

The call to a vocation began to take shape when at age 15 he visited a terminally ill patient with leukaemia at a hospital in the city of Cinco Saltos along with a parish priest who, accompanied by a seminarian, was administering the sacrament of anointing of the sick to the patients.

At that time, Oser felt that science and medicine were not enough to end people’s suffering.

A priest from where he grew up was the spiritual director who guided him until he was 18, when he decided to begin priestly formation.

He first served at the Jesus the Good Shepherd Seminary in Río Cuarto in Córdoba province, and then he transferred to Buenos Aires, where he continued his formation at the St. Peter and St. Paul Patagonian Seminary until 2021.

During those years, he worked in parishes in the Buenos Aires neighbourhoods of Mataderos, Saavedra, and Villa Crespo.

That same year, he returned to Río Negro where on May 25, 2022, he was ordained a deacon and was sent to Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish in General Roca.

“My destination so far, and as long as God says so, will be here in Roca,” Oser said.--CNA