New priest takes over St. Anne's in Tucumcari

The Rev. Cameron Degani a few months ago was assigned to preside over St. Anne's Catholic Church in Tucumcari. He said he likes what he sees from his congregation and community in his first-ever stint as a priest.

Degani, 29, a Roswell native who moved to Albuquerque as a teen and attended the University of New Mexico before becoming a priest, received the Tucumcari assignment after the archbishop of the Santa Fe Archdiocese offered it to him.

"It was a great honor," he said during a recent interview. "There's always excitement and a joy about that ... that first pastorship stepping into the role of kind of that leader of that community."

Degani also presides over small Catholic churches in Logan, San Jon and Nara Visa as part of his circuit.

Degani replaces the Rev. Johnpaul Afuecheta, who look a leave of absence around Easter due to medical reasons after six years at the church and returned to his native Africa.

Degani previously had been a parochial vicar - a sort of priest intern - at Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church in Las Vegas before receiving his gig in Tucumcari.

In his office, which contains artwork of St. Francis of Assisi, Pope John Paul II, St. Joseph and Padre Pio, Degani was asked about his impressions of Tucumcari during his first few months here.

"It's a close-knit community," he said. "A lot of people very clearly know each other and try to care for one another. It's been beautiful to see.

"There's a lot of faith in this community ... a lot of desire to come together and make things work and to support one another. It seems to me that there's a lot of cooperation among people, even of different groups, a lot of respect. That's been a beautiful thing to witness ... a surprise and a good impression."

Degani said among the biggest challenges Tucumcari faces are economic - namely, the closing of the railroad during the 1950s, then the bypass of U.S. 66 by Interstate 40 a few years later.

"I think there's a lot of desire to make Tucumcari a great place to live," he said. "But I'm aware there's also been a large number of people moving away because they they don't have the jobs they need to be able to support their families and concerns about the the prospects of of living in the community in the future.

"I think I'm trying to focus on those positive things that we do have: the community involvement, the support, the kind of that close-knit ties, the family structures that we do have here.

"The possibility of being involved in the town and actually making a difference and building up the community is something to that's very conscious on my mind."

Degani said in his written introduction to the congregation he felt drawn to the priesthood while at UNM.

"I was on my own faith journey, discovering more about God and his working in my life," he explained. "I had received a lot of a lot of graces and a lot of healing of different things. I just wanted to serve the Lord and to be a part of his church, but I didn't quite know until my sophomore year of college when I got really involved at the Newman Center at UNM, which is kind of Catholic parish on the campus.

"I found a good group of friends that we just were walking with one another in the faith and supporting each other. Over time, I think I just started realizing how how much the faith meant to me, how I desired to share it with other people. It became clear to me the Lord was asking for that specific sacrifice of of being a priest and serving his people in that way and spreading the faith through that vocation."

Though Degani said he came from a Catholic family, he said his parents were a bit surprised and shocked when he told them he wanted to be a priest.

"They wanted the best for me," he explained. "They wanted to know that I would be be safe and happy and have the means to support myself and the whatever my future held. We had some tough conversations, but I think eventually they they came to accept and and to support that."

Degani was majoring in chemical engineering at UNM. He noted a significant portion of seminary students also were in engineering before going into the priesthood.

"I'd say probably a good 25% of the guys that were in seminary had either started off studying something like chemistry, biology, engineering - and many of them had actually finished it and had even worked in that field for a year or two - before discerning the call to the priesthood.

"And it was one of those phenomena that we always joked about and mentioned. Why is that the case? I think there's a love for truth, a desire for orderliness or understanding how things work, the principles of the universe.

"For a lot of these guys and for myself realizing that as Catholics, as Christians, the greatest source of truth is, of course, God. You know the author of truth, the author of everything that exists, the creator of the universe. I could, in a sense, be involved in the highest truth and the highest source of goodness and the eternal realities of heaven and God."

Degani said one of his hobbies is indoor rock climbing.

"I got into rock climbing a lot in my time at seminary," he said. "A friend introduced it to me, and it was a very enjoyable way to get exercise."

Degani said he hasn't figured out how to use the rock-climbing machine at the Mesalands Community College fitness center, but he aims to do so.