'Biking 4 Vocations'

Montville parishioner helps make documentary to raise awareness of call to priesthood, religious life

FILMMAKERS  Filming the 1,400-mile “pilgrimage” is Caitlin Fitzgerald (right) of St. Pius X Parish, Montville, who is pictured with production assistant Victoria Drasheff.

MONTVILLE  This week, a team of hearty young men — consisting of two priests and three seminarians from New York State — should be pedaling toward the final stretch of a physically demanding 29-day bike trek up the East Coast. This 1,400-mile “pilgrimage” has put into high gear their efforts to raise awareness for vocations to the priesthood and religious life.

Following these bicyclists on every mile of their ambitious road trip, which they call “Biking 4 Vocations,” has been 26-year-old Caitlin Fitzgerald, a parishioner of St. Pius X here and a TV professional. She has been capturing on video the adventures of these riders — who hail from the Archdiocese of New York and the dioceses of Brooklyn and Rockville Centre — for an upcoming documentary about their excursion, which started in St. Augustine, Fla., on May 17 and will end in Rockville Centre, N.Y., on Sunday, June 14.

“It [the bike trip] gets the word out about vocations and the idea that it’s normal to become a priest. Today, many people don’t think it’s normal; it still raises people’s eye­brows,” said Fitzgerald, a graduate of St. Pius X School and Morris Catholic High School, Denville, and member of a video production team that has been filming the bicyclists on their route, which will pass through 11 states, five archdioceses and 10 dioceses. “Along the way, they are stopping at parishes and schools to talk about vocations and good Catholic families that help form more priests. They also are talking about the fact that we all have a calling, whether it’s to become a good husband or wife or a good priest,” she said.

Fitzgerald decided to hitch a ride with “Biking 4 Vocations” — which is guided by the slogan “Share the Road with Christ” — after Father Joseph Fitzgerald, Rockville Centre’s vocations director, one of the bicyclists and also her cousin, asked her join the pilgrimage to help film it for a documentary. So she left a job that she loved — as an associate producer at Gigantic! Productions, which produces MTV’s “True Life,” a documentary series that follows people facing various life issues. Fitzgerald joined Gigantic! after earning a bachelor’s degree in television journalism from West Virginia University.

“I loved to talk to people [for ‘True Life’]. It was cool that they would invite us [the production team] into their homes and tell their stories. It was difficult for us, but it must have been more difficult for them,” said Fitzgerald, who lives in Pine Brook, and who joined DeSales Media Group of the Brooklyn Diocese to help make the documentary.

Riding with Fitzgerald in a car next to the bicyclists during filming is production assistant Victoria Drasheff, a freshman at Emerson College in Boston. Fitzgerald anticipates that the hour-long documentary will be completed soon after the end of the bike trek. It will air on various TV outlets, be posted on social media and will be distributed to dioceses and Catholic organizations, she said.

“It’s a social-media world. People also love to watch TV. These are the best way to reach people,” said Fitzgerald, who noted that the team has been providing updates through its website, biking4vocations.org; video-sharing sites, such as Vimeo and YouTube; and social media, such as FaceBook and Twitter. Also, the team has been receiving considerable coverage from both the Catholic and secular media nationally and in some of the locales that they have visited.

It’s anticipated that today, Thursday, June 11, the bike team will visit Newark, after a stop the day before in Trenton prior to heading to New York City. For the bicyclists, this pilgrimage has two dimensions: physical — the sacrificial elements of biking — and spiritual — taking time to pray the Liturgy of the Hours five times a day and celebrate Mass in various locations. After a day’s journey, they settle in at one of their stops, having conversation and then dinner with parishioners or families or clergy in parishes that are hosting the team, they said.

Father Fitzgerald, a member of the 1996 U.S. Olympic Handball Team, has been joined on this road trip by the following bicyclists: the Brooklyn-based Father Marc Swartvagher, academic dean of the Cathedral Seminary House of Formation, Douglaston, N.Y., and seminarians Dominik Wegiel and Stephen Rooney of Rockville Centre and Steven Diaz of the New York Archdiocese.

“The objective of this biking pilgrimage is to give glory to God by encouraging vocations and by inviting the local Church to respond to Jesus’ missionary call to ‘make disciples of all nations,’ ” said Father Fitzgerald, who also noted that “Biking 4 Vocations” has been accepting donations through its website.