“No, no, no!”

That was Fr. Tomasz Flak’s response when he first heard God’s call.

“Computer programming, this is what I thought that I would do,” he said. “Not priesthood, not religious life.”

Fr. Tomasz said that he first started to hear a vocational call when he was a teen growing up in a small village in Poland. It surprised him. “I was…” and he pauses for the correct word in English, “not a quiet boy! Maybe not as well behaved as my brother and sister.”

He smiles, when he learns what the English word “naughty” means.

“Yes, perhaps I was naughty,” he laughs. “My brother, my friends –– I thought that they were much better than me.”

He tried to stop listening to God’s call but finally gave in. “I had to listen,” he said. “And I had to answer.”

When he told his parents that he wanted to be a priest, an SCJ priest, they responded the same way he did when he first heard his call.

“No, not you!” his parents said to him. He laughed again.

“They did not see it either, but when I told them, I knew that I had to follow my call to the priesthood,” said Fr. Tomasz. “I allowed my contact with God to be more personal. Listening in prayer helped me find my path and know that this is God’s plan for me.”

Knew the SCJs since childhood

For Fr. Tomasz, pursuing a vocation to religious life and the priesthood easily led to the Priests of the Sacred Heart. He has known them all his life.

“They were the priests at my home parish, and the novitiate was there too,” he said. “They worked with the children, teaching religious education.”

He entered the community, professing first vows in 2001, assuming that he would be a parish priest just as the SCJs he knew as a child. And for the first years after his 2007 ordination he did just that. Fr. Tomasz served at a parish in Krakow for two years and then in Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski (about 100 miles northeast of Krakow) for another two. Besides parochial ministry, he also taught religion in public primary and high schools.

A change in plans

After four years of parochial ministry Fr. Tomasz had the same experience as many SCJs; his life took a direction he never anticipated when he first pursued his vocation.

Soon after ordination he asked to go to the missions. “Africa; I wanted to serve in Africa,” he said. But a ski accident left him with some minor health concerns that his superiors thought could be better addressed in Europe.

Instead of Africa, Fr. Tomasz went to Rome for a nine-month finance workshop offered by the General Treasurer’s Office. He joined approximately 20 SCJs from around the world.

“I helped the pastor in Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski do the financial reports but didn’t think of myself as being someone who would work in finance full-time,” said Fr. Tomasz. However, his provincial superior did, and asked him to go to the workshop in hopes that he could later assist with the provincial treasurer’s office.

Fr. Tomasz went to Rome, studied Italian, and then stayed for the workshop. Near the end of the session he was looking forward to returning to Poland.

And then Fr. José Ornelas Carvalho, SCJ, superior general, asked to have a word with him.

“I think that you should stay,” was basically Fr. General’s message. Fr. Aquilino Mielgo Domínguez, SCJ, general treasurer, wanted to have a member of the community work in his office as an assistant, later helping the next general administration during its initial months of leadership.

“Fr. Aquilino became general treasurer with very little background or information,” said Fr. Tomasz. “I will work with Fr. Aquilino and Aldo [Aldo Ivaldi, Fr. Aquilino’s financial assistant] so that I can be a bridge between the two administrations and help make a more smooth transition.”

The next general administration will be chosen at the 2015 General Chapter.

From Rome to the United States

After a few months in Poland last summer, Fr. Tomasz returned to Italy where he first went to Bologna to work on his Italian. “That was my one condition,” he said. “We had just a little Italian before the workshop; I needed much more to work in Rome.”

Then he began his introduction to the general treasurer’s office, but only for a few months before he was off to learn another language: English.

“We use two languages in Rome,” said Fr. Tomasz. “Italian and English.”

Just like Fr. Aquilino before him, as well as several other members of the General Curia, Fr. Tomasz enrolled in Sacred Heart School of Theology’s ESL program (English as a Second Language). He arrived in January with only a handful of English words. By the beginning of May he knew enough English to talk about his time here with only one quick look at the translation app on his phone.

A person who likes new experiences Fr. Tomasz said that he has enjoyed being in the United States. His biggest surprise was getting a hands-on feel for the “bigness” of the country.

During Easter break he flew to Seattle to be at a Polish-American parish. “It took four hours to fly there!” he said. “From Warsaw it only takes two hours to fly to Rome. You don’t know how big the United States is until you are here.”

Fr. Tomasz has appreciated spending time in parishes in the United States where he finds a style of church much different than his native Poland, or in Italy

“The activity of people in the church here is very different; the style of prayer and the ownership the people have,” he said. In Poland, where there are usually several priests at each parish –– “sometimes five, six, seven or more” –– there is not the same level of lay involvement.

“Because of the number of priests in Poland, people let them do much of the work of the parish,” he said. In the United States, he said that he found that going to church and being part of a parish seems like more of a conscious choice. “In Poland people often go to church because it is our tradition; it is what we do…

“It is good to see so many people active in their parish here.”

However, he emphasized that the traditional expressions of faith found in Poland are good too. The two experiences are not “either/or” styles of church.

“This is what is good about experiencing a different culture; we see what is different and good in each and we can take that back to what we know,” he said.

Fr. Tomasz is grateful for the opportunity that he has had to study in the United States. “The U.S. Province has been a good host,” he added.

He returns to Rome on June 11.