Photo Caption: Father Vincent A. Giacabazi, S.J., ordained on June 13, celebrated a Mass of Thanksgiving on June 20 at Holy Family Parish, Peoria.

Members of Holy Family Parish in Peoria welcomed back an old friend and new priest, Father Vincent A. Giacabazi, S.J., for a Mass of Thanksgiving on June 20. Following the liturgy they were able to greet him and offer their congratulations at an open house at the Lariat Club.

Father Giacabazi was one of eight men ordained to the priesthood for the Society of Jesus — also known as the Jesuits — on June 13 at St. Joseph Church in New Orleans. He will work in Belize this summer and teach at Rockhurst High School in Kansas City, Missouri, when classes begin in the fall.

The son of Nora O’Neill and Bernard Giacabazi, he graduated from Peoria Notre Dame High School in 2000, and got to know the Jesuits while attending Saint Louis University in St. Louis. Father Giacabazi volunteered at Rockhurst High School as part of the Alum Service Corps for a year before entering the Society of Jesus in August 2005.

He professed perpetual vows of poverty, chastity and obedience in 2007, and was ordained to the transitional diaconate on Oct. 11, 2014.