Thursday, October 1, 2026
After nearly 30 years of service, the Jesuits will leave St. Anthony’s Parish in Oceanside next June, marking a major transition for the community as the parish prepares for new leadership.
The Jesuits, members of the Society of Jesus founded in 1540, are a global Catholic order famed for education, social-justice work and intellectually rooted preaching. St. Anthony’s loss of Jesuit leadership is part of a broader, structural challenge facing the Society of Jesus, as declining vocations, aging membership, and cultural shifts continue to strain its capacity to staff parishes. The planned exit from St. Anthony’s ends a half-century of distinctive Jesuit ministry that has shaped the parish’s outreach and identity.
“We’re devastated,” said longtime parish member and St. Anthony’s Father’s Club member Joe Hissong. “I grew up in a Jesuit parish, I went to a Jesuit high school, I went to a Jesuit university People are devastated. They’ve been here for almost 50 years. There’s a reason that people draw not just from Oceanside, but from all around Long Island.”
Parishioners said the announcement first appeared in the church bulletin shortly after the parish’s June feast. Within days, leaders from a cross-section of the parish’s ministries convened and more than 150 people signed an initial petition urging the provincial to reconsider. Parish leaders have organized a petition, gathering more than 150 signatures at a recent meeting, and launched a letter-writing campaign to the Jesuit provincial in New York, with copies sent as far as the Superior General of the order in Rome.
“Our intention is to keep that up, and we know that the provincial is going to be replaced at some point next year, and so we may hit the new guy with copies of all these letters,” Hissong said. “The intention is not to go quietly.”
St. Anthony’s identity has been shaped by Jesuit priorities: an emphasis on intellectual homilies, rigorous formation and a strong “men for others” service ethic.
“There’s a vibrancy and an intellectual content to the priests at St. Anthony’s that I’m going to be surprised if could be matched by a diocesan priest,” Hissong said. “People come to St. Anthony’s because of the Jesuits, at least partially. When they’re gone that draw will be gone.”
Matt Prendergast, lead organizer of the parish father’s club along with Hissong, echoed those concerns but stressed parishioner responsibility.
“The priests aren’t St. Anthony’s parish — the parishioners of St. Anthony’s parish are,” he said. “We can take the lessons that the Jesuits taught us and continue to practice that in our lives. … The spirituality is an important part of my spiritual life and ours in general.”
Prendergast said leaders have contacted roughly 20 active ministries, held strategy meetings and drafted sample letters for parishioners who want to voice their concerns to Jesuit leadership and to Bishop Barres of Rockville Centre. Despite the uncertainty, leaders expressed cautious hope that the parish’s ministries and sense of community will endure.
“I have faith that St. Anthony’s will carry on and it’ll be different, but it’ll be good,” Prendergast said.
