Announcing Our Redeemer’s New Assistant Rector

Dear friends,
 I am writing with exciting news: we have called The Rev. Emily J. García to be the next Assistant Rector of Church of Our Redeemer. Her first Sunday at Redeemer will be March 21.

Watch a video from Emily introducing herself to the Redeemer community.

Emily comes to us from the Church of The Redeemer in Chestnut Hill, where she has been the Priest for Children, Teens, & Families since 2017. At The Redeemer, Emily oversaw the Sunday school, nursery, middle school, and high school youth groups, led confirmation class, and created intergenerational fellowship and formation programming.

Emily is a graduate of Yale Divinity School and Princeton University. She was ordained in our own Diocese of Massachusetts in 2017 and served as seminarian at St. John’s Church in Charlestown and St. Peter’s Church in Cheshire, CT. She was also the Kellogg Fellow at the Episcopal Chaplaincy at Harvard for two years. Prior to seminary she also worked as an elementary school teacher, a summer-program teacher, a waitress, and a tutor for children at MGH.

During the pandemic, Emily worked to successfully move Sunday school and youth group classes online, and to create outdoor family worship services. She is also involved in anti-racism work, leading anti-racism groups for teens, adults, and the Vestry at The Redeemer.

Emily is married to Omar De Paolis, a research chemist who works at Sigilon Therapeutics developing a new treatment for hemophilia and diabetes. Omar is Italian and a Roman Catholic, so they worship together both at St. Columbkille’s in Brighton as well as the Monastery in Cambridge. They live in Brighton, but love going all over Boston for good food, beautiful scenery, and (pre-pandemic) good places to go dancing. Emily’s other hobbies look suspiciously like work (reading about children and theology, writing essays), with the exception of her jungle of houseplants and mixed media art supplies.

I want to thank our search committee: Cathy Burns Peter Koso, Linda Kukolich,  Mia Ong, and Bill Vogele, for all their dedicated work over a very concentrated time period to find the right person for Redeemer. Their patience, wisdom, discerning questions, and enthusiasm for the Redeemer community were instrumental in the process.

The sad part of all of this is that our time with Rev. Frank Fornaro as our Interim Clergy Assistant is drawing to a close. It has been a great blessing to have Frank’s presence, support, and wisdom helping to guide us through the pandemic. We are especially blessed that Frank isn’t leaving, just shifting back to being our Priest Associate and a member of our congregation as he was before Andrew’s departure. We will thank and express our appreciation to Frank on Sunday, April 11.

I especially want to thank you for your prayers and support through this process. I know Emily will find Redeemer a wonderful place to be in ministry with all of you.

Peace,
Kate