Father Frank DeSiano, C.S.P. (center) will lead the Paulist National Catholic Evangelization Association

Father Frank DeSiano, C.S.P., will now lead the Paulist National Catholic Evangelization Association in Washington, D.C.

Father DeSiano said this position would allow him to further a long-time interest in evangelization, a field in which he has been a national leader for more than 20 years. For the next year, Father DeSiano will remain as the first consultor of the Paulists while he begins his service at PNCEA.

Father DeSiano’s interests lie in developing programs that reach out to those who have no church family, and also to those who have stopped practicing their Catholic faith. He recently developed a program called Awakening Faith: Reconnecting to Your Catholic Faith – a six-week process-based approach to involving marginal Catholics in the Church – with Father Kenneth Boyack, C.S.P., current vice president of PNCEA and its former president.

Awakening Faith was launched nationally in January 2009 to great interest and anticipation because of the pressing need to reach out to Catholics who, while maintaining an identity with the Catholic Church, nevertheless do not practice it very much. In July, Paulist Press will publish Father DeSiano’s latest book, Reactivating Our Catholic Faith, which is a collection of eight essays and discussion questions to help people reconnect with their Catholic faith.

Father DeSiano is also interested in those who are searching for faith. Given the modern use of the Internet, he hopes to develop Web sites, which will make the Catholic faith accessible to those who are searching for faith in modern, approachable ways, including podcasts and videos.

“The Paulists have an approach to sharing faith. It is friendly and contemporary. This approach is needed now more than ever because Catholicism can seem so obscure or unattractive to people today,” he said.

PNCEA has long been a leader in resources to equip Catholics to share faith. Disciples in Mission, a three-year program to help Catholics grasp Catholic evangelization, has been used in hundreds of parishes. Invite provides material to help parishes reach out to seekers. Uniquely in the American church, PNCEA produces newsletters for prisoners and provides Bibles and other resources for the incarcerated. It also provides material for parishes to reach out to inactive Catholics.

Father DeSiano’s involvement in evangelization goes back to his time as pastor of St. Paul the Apostle in New York.

“How can we be missionaries in the middle of the busiest city in the world?” he would ask himself. Completing a doctor of ministry program at Boston University, he helped parishes in Washington, D.C., develop evangelization teams for six years. At that point he also began writing extensively about evangelization and spirituality and served as a consultant to the U.S. Catholics Committee on Evangelization.