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Monday, July 28, 2025

Four new priests to be ordained

by

Peter Christopher
2144 days ago
20190913
Deacons Mikkel Trestrail from left, Kwesi Alleyne, Stephan Alexander and Kenwyn Sylvester.

Deacons Mikkel Trestrail from left, Kwesi Alleyne, Stephan Alexander and Kenwyn Sylvester.

Photo courtesy Archbishop's Appeal

For the first time in more than a decade, four Ro­man Catholic priests will be or­dained in the Port-of-Spain Arch­dio­cese.

Dea­cons Stephan Alexan­der, Kwe­si Al­leyne, Ken­wyn Sylvester and Mikkel Tre­strail will be or­dained to the priest­hood to­morow dur­ing a spe­cial mass at 10 am at the Cathe­dral of the Im­mac­u­late Con­cep­tion.

Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don will pre­side over the or­di­na­tions.

The quar­tet was or­dained tran­si­tion­al dea­cons on Feb­ru­ary 24 at St Philip and St James RC Church, Ch­agua­nas.

The last time more lo­cal Arch­dio­cese wit­nessed priest­ly or­di­na­tions of more than two or three dea­cons was on De­cem­ber 6, 2003, when five dea­cons were or­dained by then Arch­bish­op of Port-of-Spain Ed­ward Gilbert.

Since then con­cerns have been raised con­cerns about the short­age of new priests, with for­mer Arch­bish­op Joseph Har­ris lament­ing the lack of young men en­ter­ing the Catholic sem­i­nary in 2015.

This lead to sev­er­al for­eign priests be­ing brought in to ser­vice parish­es, while the in­creas­ing short­age of priests around the coun­try has seen sev­er­al church­es share priests from neigh­bour­ing parish­es.

In the last 10 years, on­ly 12 new priests have been or­dained in T&T, in­clud­ing four that have been or­dained since last Au­gust.

The last two priests or­dained in T&T are not cur­rent­ly in ser­vice lo­cal­ly but are cur­rent­ly sta­tioned in Ire­land, Guardian Me­dia was told.

It takes ap­prox­i­mate­ly eight to ten years in the Catholic Sem­i­nary to ful­ly com­plete the process to be­come a priest.


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