jdebicki@heights.edu
301-365-0227 ext. 129

Fr. John Debicki arrived in the U.S. in 1949 at the age of 10. After a brief stay in Delray Beach, Florida, his family moved to Washington D.C. that summer. Fr. John was in the first graduating class at Archbishop Carroll High School. In 1955 he left the capital to attend college, and graduated from Washington University in St. Louis in 1959. In 1962, he obtained a doctorate in philosophy from the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome. Ordained to the priesthood on March 19, 1964, he served as chaplain of a university residence in Seville, Spain, while at the same time doing pastoral work in a center for working-class young people. In 1965, he moved to Montreal, Quebec, where he was a chaplain for English- and French-language schools of the Montreal Catholic School Commission. From 1971 to 1984 he worked in various apostolic activities directed by Opus Dei in the Boston area, moving to Pittsburgh and St. Louis in succeeding years. From 1991 to 2005 he was associate pastor of St. Mary of the Angels Parish in Chicago. In 2005, after an absence of 50 years, he returned to the nation’s capital where he assisted the chaplain at Oakcrest School, and in 2007, came to The Heights as one of the chaplains.