Santa Clara Magazine

The good works of a trustee

Trustee Scott Santarosa, S.J. '88, was recently featured in an Ignatian News Network video biography. The Winter 2012 Santa Clara Magazine included Santarosa in the Mission Matters story "New to the Board."

The following introduction was written for and first appeared in the blog for National Jesuit News. 

A native of Sacramento, Jesuit Father Scott Santarosa, experienced the Jesuits at an early age, first as a high school student at Jesuit High School in Sacramento. Fr. Santarosa credits the care and attention of the Jesuits and lay faculty of Jesuit High in moving him to continue his Jesuit education at Santa Clara University, where he graduated in Civil Engineering in 1988.

Still not having enough of the “Jesuit thing,” he decided to do a year of volunteer work with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, where he ran an after-school program for youth in Newark, N.J. Following his year as a Jesuit volunteer, he went one step further, and joined the Jesuits in the summer of 1989.

His Jesuit life has taken him to the Bronx, New York for philosophy studies; Bellarmine College Prep in San Jose for three years of teaching; Berkeley and Mexico City for theology studies and pastoral ministry. Currently, Santarosa is the pastor at Dolores Mission parish, a small but vibrant Jesuit parish in the lowest income section of Boyle Heights, Los Angeles. He served there as a newly ordained priest back in 2000 where the good parishioners there taught him how to be a priest. His time there planted the seed of desire to do parish work, so he is happy to be there now full-time, doing pastoral work, much of it in Spanish. He feels humbled and grateful to see God in the people of that community.

Ignatian News Network met up with Fr. Santarosa to learn more about the man behind the collar.