On Aug. 9, following the 10:30 a.m. Mass, parishioners of St. James Catholic Parish in Gadsden gathered for a reception in the parish’s Seton Hall to welcome Father Pachomius (Paco) Alvarado-Garcia, O.S.B. as the parish’s new Parochial Administrator. His appointment was effective July 1. Prior to his Gadsden assignment, Father Paco served St. Francis Xavier Catholic Parish in Birmingham. Father Paca is a native of Matanzas, Cuba, where he was involved in catechetical activities as a teenager in his hometown parish. He later pursued religious studies at Instituto Maria Reina in Havana. As a young man, he moved to Colombia where he worked for a marketing and public relations company for two years beforeentering Monasterio Benedictino de Tibati in Bogotá. It was there as a novitiate that he had his first contact with St. Bernard Abby through Father Joel Martin, O.S.B., who was visiting the Colombian monastery on business. In 2014 when Father Paco came to the United States, he entered St. Bernard Abby and professed his solemn monastic vows on Aug. 6, 2018. He then earned an M.A. of Divinity at St. Meinrad Seminar and was ordained to the priesthood on June 10, 2023, at the Abby Church in Cullman.