The Redwood City native was hired in late 2022 as the new coordinator of youth and young adult ministry for the Archdiocese of San Francisco. Informed by his own circuitous faith journey, Gonzalo Alvarado is on a mission to galvanize the faith of young local Catholics from adolescence through early adulthood.
Alvarado is visiting parishes as he wraps his arms around his new job, offering a compelling tale of spiritual estrangement and reconciliation — his own.
“When you share about your own life and how God has worked miracles in it, I think that story is a way to reach youth and young adults,” he told Catholic San Francisco. You can talk all about God’s goodness and love, he said, and about how He sent His Son to die on the cross so that we could have eternal life. “But if they don’t hear something concrete from someone they can relate to, it might not get through,” he said.
Alvarado is responsible for organizing or facilitating confirmation retreats, catechetical events, speaker series, pilgrimages (such as to World Youth Day), mission trips, special liturgical opportunities, leadership training and more.
A priority, he said, is helping establish parish-based ministries for youth and young adults where none exist and reviving those that disappeared during the pandemic.
“Less than one-half of the parishes in the Archdiocese have active youth or young adult ministries,” said Alvarado. Many existing ministries went dormant in or after 2020, and some have “simply failed to come back….”
As a boy, Alvarado, 50, was an altar server at St. Anthony of Padua Parish in Menlo Park, his family’s home parish. That ended in high school after he grew increasingly “attracted by the culture and what I thought it offered me.”
As a college student, he rejected the Church teachings he was raised with, and for all practical purposes, adopted peer beliefs on sex, abortion, marriage and more.
“I would still try to go to Mass every Sunday,” Alvarado said. But his life was a loop of sexual “hookups,” parties and porn that continued well into his 20s.
“I was thinking this would bring me happiness or that it would fulfill me,” he said. “But I was still empty.”
Alvarado said anger was another reason he strayed from the Church. He was angry at his violent, alcoholic father, but angrier at God for his family situation.
“At some point I decided I was going to be the god of my own life,” he said.
That’s pretty much what he did until the day a friend from St. Anthony’s invited him to a meeting of the parish’s Neocatechumenal Way. Founded in Spain in 1964, “The Way,” as it has been approved by the Holy See, is a “post-baptismal catechumenate at the service of the bishops.” St. Anthony is one of more than 20,000 parishes worldwide with a Neocatechumenal Way community.
“For some reason, I listened,” Alvarado said. “God lured me back with His love. I came back to the Church and turned away from the life I was living.” In time, he › became the parish confirmation teacher and the young adult coordinator, and he continues to serve as its pro-life coordinator. Alvarado’s reconcilation with God the Father helped him reconcile with his own father.
In 2021, after 20 years as a social worker for the County of San Mateo, Alvarado left a comfortable lifestyle to serve as a lay missionary.
The year he spent in service to a parish in Queens, New York, was in one way an opportunity for discernment. He had always wanted to get married, but it had not happened.
“I wanted to know what my vocation was,” said Alvarado. He abandoned his desires and listened for God’s voice.
“It gave me a true freedom that I’ve never had before,” he said. “It allowed me to be in this intimate relationship with Christ and trust Him more.”
With his year of service complete, he returned to the Bay Area but without confirmation of a vocation to the priesthood. Soon after, he was offered the job as youth and young adult coordinator.
Alvarado feels he has real hope he can offer young people at a time when suicide is an increasingly common solution to depression, isolation and anxiety.
“I firmly believe that most young people do not want to end their lives,” he said. They want to end their suffering, but they don’t know how. “Storms are going to come in life, but if you have Christ, you will not sink.”
Having attended the past five World Youth Day events with young people from his parish, Gonzalo Alvarado is a World Youth Day veteran. “I’m planning on going to this one too, God willing,” he said….
From the Archdiocese of San Francisco
I wish him well. It’s about the most difficult work there is in parish ministry these days. Churches are bereft of young people.
Evangelize the youth because they’re our future.
What a wonderful story of a modern day prodigal now fit for the Lord’s service– and a very special service at that. Thank you Cal Catholic for sharing such positive stories of our Lord’s work in people’s lives. Gonzalo seems uniquely prepared for a challenging ministry. I have no doubt young lives will be saved from suicide with these souls won from the clutch of Satan. Go Gonzalo go! This Neocatechumenal Way must be an outstanding program; I shall have to look into it.
I know several people for whom the Neocatechumenal Way greatly invigorated their Catholic faith. If it works for them and helps increase their devotion and witness, more power to them.
I think that something that would help young Catholics a lot– would be to get them away from the “woke” Death Culture, and have events to prepare them for finding a good spouse for Marriage, and learn how to be a good Catholic husband and wife, mother and father– and how to make a good Catholic home, and raise Catholic children successfully, in the “Domestic. Church,” the Catholic home and family. Also, to have good events for young Catholics to learn about being a priest or a nun.. This is the time to prepare for successful grown- up roles, in the Church. When that is accomplished, young Catholics will be very happy and proud, to have an excellent place in our Church,, with a good future.
Another thing: keep them out of Catholic schools. And good luck avoiding the woke death culture. It is San Francisco, after all, which is the shrill, woke capital of the country.
Star of the Sea Church in San Francisco has a good Cstholic school, and a good group for young people. Many of their Catholic young people have gotten married, and are having children. That church is very good.
In recent years, several young men from Star of the Sea church have also become priests.
This is good news. It’s always great to hear young Catholics are getting serious with the faith. I just hope the Neocathecatecals have cleaned up their act.
In the 1990s, they were quire a problem, in that their Mass was very different from ours. Back then, their Mass was held on Saturday evenings as a separate congregation away from regular parishioners. They sat at a table where every member delivered his own homily and joined the priest in the consecration narrative as a group, as if they were all co-celebrants. They shared (confessed) their sins publicly (within the group.) They received communion sitting down and passed on the Body and Blood of Christ from one person to another, around the table. Members were not allowed to join the rest of the parishioners in attending the regular Mass.
It became quite a problem (I think in Guam, correct me if I’m wrong.), that neocats were purged out of the diocese. I think Pope Benedict warned them against liturgical abuses or their approval would be rescinded. I just hope the Pope’s words did not fall on deaf ears.