Redemptorist Father Robert Wojtek to lead Sacred Heart of Jesus

Redemptorist Father Robert F. Wojtek, pastor of the Catholic Community of St. Michael and St. Patrick in Fells Point since 2005, will become the pastor of Sacred Heart of Jesus in Highlandtown July 27.

Father Wojtek will oversee a parish in transition as Spanish-speaking and English-speaking parishioners of St. Michael and Spanish-speaking parishioners of Our Lady of Pompei in Highlandtown relocate to Sacred Heart of Jesus on the Feast of the Transfiguration in August.

Sacred Heart of Jesus, currently an English-speaking community, will become a bicultural, bilingual faith community. St. Patrick will become a mission of Sacred Heart and Archbishop Borders School in Highlandtown will relocate to the Sacred Heart campus for the 2012-13 school year.

An East Baltimore native born in 1955, Father Wojtek grew up in Our Lady of Fatima parish in Baltimore. He was ordained a Redemptorist priest in 1981 by New York Cardinal Terence Cooke.

Father Wojtek studied Spanish and served as an associate pastor in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic for several years. He then studied in Madrid, Spain, before becoming a novice master in Puerto Rico from 1991-93 and a vocations promoter in the Dominican Republic from 1994-97. Father Wojtek was a novice master in Puerto Rico from 1997-99 and in Venezuela from 2000-01. He was associate pastor of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in New York from 2001-05.