PALM BEACH GARDENS | The faithful are invited to be prayerful witnesses at the ordination of Deacon Jedidiah Preble to the diocesan priesthood Saturday, Jan. 31, at the Cathedral of St. Ignatius Loyola, 9999 N. Military Trail in Palm Beach Gardens.
Bishop Emeritus Gerald M. Barbarito will preside and confer the sacrament of holy orders on Deacon Preble at the 11 a.m. Mass, with hundreds of fellow clergy, family members, friends and well-wishers in attendance.
Deacon Preble, whose given name is Alpha Jorge Jedidiah Preble, was ordained a transitional deacon March 29, 2025, and concluded his seminary studies last May. He has been serving as a deacon at St. Juliana Parish in West Palm Beach, where he has been performing baptisms, delivering homilies and working with altar servers, helping them understand better their role in the Mass.
“To me, the liturgy is so important because it’s the place where heaven meets earth, and so I really want children, and not just children but young men, to be close to our Lord during those moments, during the moments of the liturgy, because I think that that’s where so many vocations are born,” he said.
Deacon Preble is happy that he will remain after ordination at St. Juliana, under the tutelage of Father Ducasse François, pastor. “I don’t deserve to be working under Father Ducasse, but I’m so blessed that I am,” he said.
One of seven children born to an American father and mother from Argentina, Deacon Preble moved from Brazil to the Washington, D.C., area of Maryland when he was 7. He learned English in the United States, and then he moved with his family to Argentina four years later. He stayed in South America until 1999, when the family moved to Salt Lake City. They made moves so they could be near members of his extended family, and he learned how to speak multiple languages (English, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian).
He recalled the day God spoke to his heart about the priesthood. “It was a Wednesday, it was around noon, and I was at St. Patrick’s in Columbus, Ohio, going to daily Mass. And St. Paul’s words really struck me that day. The words were, ‘Those who are married are concerned with the things of their spouse, how to please their spouse, and those who are not married are concerned with the things of God, how to please God,’” Deacon Preble said.
“I just remember sitting there and hearing those words and being very struck by the fact that, yeah, I want to be concerned with the things of God. I want to be concerned with the things of God and how to please God. So, that’s when I made the decision to start figuring out what I needed to do to become a priest,” he said.
Deacon Preble’s road to the priesthood has been a little more indirect than some. He first was attracted to Franciscan missionary life with a semi-cloistered community in Binghamton, New York. After a while, he realized a need to have more contact with people and entered the priestly formation program for the Diocese of Dallas, Texas.
About 2021, staying with his parents, who had moved to the Boca Raton area in 2000, he felt God calling him to South Florida. His father was showing early signs of Alzheimer’s disease, so Deacon Preble applied and was accepted into the Diocese of Palm Beach’s priestly formation program.
Growing up, he learned two important concepts that have shaped his understanding of faith, God and personal identity, he said. The first is the universal call to holiness, meaning that all people are called to be saints.
“Ordinary people become saints, as we see with the recently canonized St. Carlo Acutis. It’s not something that’s out of the ordinary,” Deacon Preble said.
The other idea is that all are sons or daughters of God, a concept called divine filiation. “That struck deep because it has a couple of implications. The implications are that, as a son of God, I inherit all of the things that the Son of God inherits. That’s eternal life, but it means also I inherit the duties that come along with being a son of God, and so that means the way I have to treat other people, the way I treat God, of course,” he said. “So, those two big things, divine filiation and the universal call to holiness, already were kind of the basis of my vocation.”
Now 42 and on the cusp of entering the priesthood, Deacon Preble is looking forward to seeing his family members at the ordination, including two siblings who live in South Florida, a sister from Argentina, an older brother from Seattle and younger brother from Wyoming. His family has been instrumental in his adult formation, he said, especially his father, who died in 2022 and is buried here, and his mother, Constanza, who works at St. Joan of Arc Parish in Boca Raton.
“She’s been an incredibly significant part of my vocation,” he said. “It was she who inculcated in me a desire to be near the Eucharist. She would go to daily Mass when I was young, and she would always invite me, and never forced me. She never kind of imposed it on me, but she always invited me. Sometimes I went, and sometimes I didn’t. So, I’m glad to be able to be a priest in the diocese where she’ll be.”
To view a video related to this story, visit https://palmbeachvocations.com. To watch the ordination Mass (live or recorded), go to the cathedral’s YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/@CathedralPBG or on Facebook (@PBVocations). To learn about vocations in the Diocese of Palm Beach, visit https://palmbeachvocations.com/, or follow the Office of Vocations and Seminarians on Facebook and Instagram.
