Resident Priest Assigned To St. Johns Church

By VERNON ROBISON

The Progress

The members of St. John’s Catholic Church in Logandale are celebrating the arrival of the first full-time resident priest assigned to the local parish in more than 13 years. Father Henry Salditos, a native of The Phillipines, began his work at St. John’s in Logandale on July 1. Since then he has been expanding services at the church to make them more convenient and accessible to parishioners.

The last resident Catholic priest at St. John’s was Father Leo Coughlin who retired in February of 2008 after serving many years at St. Johns.

In the time since then, the local Church has had only part-time, visiting clergy to lead the flock in Mass services. Most of these visiting priests have come to officiate at St. John’s from their permanent assignments at La Virgen de Guadalupe Catholic Church in Mesquite.

Since the Mesquite church has two different Mass services scheduled on Sunday morning, the St. John’s Sunday mass has had to wait until noon each Sunday for a priest to be available. St. Johns has also held a weekday mass on Wednesday evenings.

But with the arrival of Salditos, more services were able to be added for the benefit of local parishioners.

“I am available to the people of the parish all the time now,” Salditos said in an interview with The Progress last week. “That is what I do. So I will be about serving the people in the ministry, administering the sacraments, and giving my time to help bring people closer to God through my ministry.”

On Sundays, instead of waiting until noon, the mass is now held earlier at 9:00 am.
“Holding it earlier makes it more convenient for people,” said Salditos. “People are happy that they can still go to Mass, and then they can do other things on Sunday. That is good.”
Salditos has also added a Saturday evening Vigil Mass beginning at 5:30 pm. This is a bilingual service with parts done in English and parts in Spanish.

The Wednesday evening weekday Mass at 5:30 will continue to be held. But a Thursday night Mass is being added also at 5:30 pm.

In addition, two special services will be held monthly including a Mass of the Annointing on the first Wednesday of the month at 5:30 pm and a Mass followed by Adoration and Confession on the first Friday of each month from 5:30 until 7:15 pm.

Because Salditos is in residence, he will be hearing confessions prior to each Mass. Or appointments may be scheduled at other times of the week for confession.

Salditos is also available to make home visits for annointing those who are sick or infirm.
“If people of the church want me to visit the elderly and the sick who can’t make it to the Church to give the sacrament, or last rites or just annointing the sick; I can do it anytime,” Salditos said. “Especially if people are dying and want to take the sacrament, they can call me and I give full priority to them. Even at one o’clock in the morning, I come.”

Salditos has even revived a beloved St. John’s tradition of ‘Cookies after Mass’. This tradition gives parishioners an opportunity to socialize with each other and the resident priest after the Mass. This observance will follow each of the weekend Mass services.

“This is a great opportunity for me to get to know the people and mingle with them and eat a fewcookies,” Salditos said. “Everyone loves it.”

Salditos comes to Logandale after serving at Our Lady of the Valley church in Pahrump, Nevada since 2012.

Before that, he served for six years at St. James The Apostle parish on Martin Luther King Blvd. in Las Vegas. There he served a largely African American congregation.

“They had their own way of celebrating the liturgy, because many of them are converts from different denominations,” Salditos said of the St. James congregation. “So they bring their music and we had a very famous gospel choir at St. James. When they were singing they almost blow off the roof. They are a vibrant and an alive community.”

Father Salditos grew up and attended seminary in The Phillipines. He comes from a family of 8 children. Four of them have given vows in the Catholic Church. In addition to himself, two of Father Henry’s brothers became priests and his sister became a nun.

Salditos served in the Calapan Oriental Mindoro diocese in his native Phillipines for fourteen years before moving to the United States in 2004.

Members of the local St. Johns parish are excited to have a resident priest to lead them again. Church secretary Cindy Nelson said that many parishioners at St. John, herself included, have been praying for 13 years now for a full time resident priest to be assigned here again. Saltitos is an answer to those prayers, she said.

“Father Henry has been like a breath of new life to St. Johns,” Nelson said. “He brings with him this joy that just bubbles up as part of his personality. He is trying to wake everything back up again and we are all so happy to have a priest again. It has been such a long while.”

For information about services at St. Johns, call the church at 702-398-3998.