Parish Staff

 



Rev. George Witt, S.J.Rev. George M. Witt, S.J., Pastor

Father George Witt, S.J., is a native of Flushing, Queens.  He entered the Society of Jesus in Syracuse, NY in August 1996, and was ordained a priest in June 2006 at Fordham University Church. 

Prior to becoming a Jesuit, Father Witt taught high school English and religious education, and served as a guidance counselor and track coach.  He has a bachelor’s degree in English and theology and a master’s degree in philosophy, both from Fordham University, and a master’s degree in divinity from the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, CA (JSTB).  He also earned a licentiate in sacred theology while at JSTB in the area of Christian Spirituality.

Father Witt served for two years as a retreat minister at St. Ignatius Loyola Retreat House (Inisfada), Manhasset, NY, where he offered spiritual direction, directed and preached retreats, and days and evenings of prayer.  Proficient in American Sign Language, Father Witt served as a deacon and spiritual director at St. Benedict’s Parish for the Deaf in San Francisco.

He joined the Parish staff at St. Ignatius in January 2007. He has been serving as Pastor since July 31, 2009.



Rev. William J. Bergen, S.J. Rev. William J. Bergen, S.J., Associate Pastor

Father William J. Bergen was born and raised in Manhattan, attended Jesuit schools, and entered the Jesuit Novitiate in Poughkeepsie in 1955.  He was ordained to the priesthood by Cardinal Francis Spellman in 1965 at Fordham University Church.  Following advanced studies in theology at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D. C., he taught theology at St. Peter’s College in Jersey City.  During these years he was also active in retreat work at Mount Manresa, the Jesuit retreat house on Staten Island.  From 1983 to 1989, Father Bergen worked as a parish priest at St. Ignatius Church in Baltimore, Maryland, and as a retreat director at Bon Secours Spiritual Center in Marriottsville, Maryland.  Since 1989 he has been on the Parish staff here at St. Ignatius Loyola.



Joanne Cunneen, M.A., M.S.  Pastoral Associate

Joanne Cunneen holds an MS degree from Hunter College in Early Childhood Education and an MA degree in Theology from the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Huntington, Long Island. 

She came to St. Ignatius Loyola Parish in 1994 as an experienced teacher and religious educator.  Her teaching career began at All Saints parish in Brooklyn as a first grade teacher in the parochial school.  After eleven years of service there, she moved to Epiphany Parish in Manhattan as a grammar school teacher and Director of Religious Education.

At St Ignatius in 1994, Joanne began as the Director of the Interparish Religious Education Program which has grown through the years to serve the religious education needs of over 500 students from diverse parishes on the upper eastside of Manhattan and throughout the metropolitan area.  This program is now situated in St. Ignatius Loyola Grammar School, St. Joseph Grammar School on East 87th Street and Marymount School on Fifth Avenue and 84th Street. This faith formation program brings children from kindergarten age through the eighth grade into contact with the religious teaching and sacramental life of our Church.  Joanne’s work has been nationally recognized by the catechetical leadership of the Catholic Church.

Shortly after her arrival at St. Ignatius, Joanne initiated the “Liturgy of the Word for Children” program as a very popular addition to our extensive Parish liturgical services.  Each Sunday, approximately 75 children are taken to hear the Sunday Scripture readings proclaimed and explained in a way that is especially accessible to young pre-school and early school-age children. At the 9:30 AM Mass, the children are brought to the Lady Chapel. At the 11:00AM Wallace Hall Family Mass, the 3-5 year olds go to the Lady Chapel, while those 5 years of age and older are brought to Loyola Chapel.

Joanne’s responsibilities at St. Ignatius include overseeing the baptismal preparation program for parents, the sacramental programs for the reception of Reconciliation, First Eucharist and Confirmation, the preparation of engaged couples for marriage, and the religious education program in our parochial Grammar School.  She also works directly with the Archdiocese of New York through her participation in programs to train teachers of religious education.  From 2007-2009 Joanne took part in the Companions of Prayer Program sponsored by Loyola Press in Chicago.



Sr. Katherine King, FSP Sr. Kathryn King, FSP, Pastoral Associate

Sister Kathryn, a member of the Franciscan Sisters of Peace, has been on the staff of St. Ignatius Loyola Parish for five years.  She was a Campus Chaplain at New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University, Newark, N.J.  She has been a spiritual director and retreat director for over twenty five years.  As an adjunct faculty member in the Practicum in Giving spiritual Direction in the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education, Fordham University, she helped to develop a training program for giving the directed retreat as a collaborative program between the Graduate School and Mariandale Retreat and Conference Center where she was Program Director for nine years.  Sister Kathryn has also been involved in the leadership of her religious congregation and in the formation of future women religious.  In that capacity she was Novice Minister for a collaborative formation program for fourteen congregations of women religious.  In this capacity she was a presenter for an international meeting for formation of women religious in Rome, for women religious in formation in Namibia, Africa, and for Franciscan formators in Scottsdale, Arizona. She recently collaborated with Dr. Janet Ruffing in teaching a course on supervision for spiritual directors in Melbourne, Australia. 



Rev. James L. Dugan, S.J. Rev. James L. Dugan, S.J., Associate Pastor

James Dugan is our most recent addition as an Associate Pastor. Fr. Dugan was born in Concord, Massachusetts and grew up and went to public schools in Buffalo, NY. He entered the New York Province of the Jesuits in 1964 and was ordained a priest in 1973. He is a graduate of Canisius College and did graduate studies and degrees at Boston College, Woodstock College, Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, University of Innsbruck, Austria, and the State University of NY at Buffalo. His principal assignments include: 12 years as librarian at the Pontifical Oriental Institute and 7 years as librarian at the Pontifical Biblical Institute, both in Rome, 10 years as a psychological counselor and philosophy instructor at Canisius College, Buffalo, and 2 years as executive assistant to the New York Province Provincial. He has also taught philosophy and theology in European programs of Notre Dame University, Loyola University of Chicago, and Saint Mary’s College Rome Program.  He enjoys travel and reading in the areas of postmodernism, psychoanalysis, cultural studies, religion, and the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, Emily Dickinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Gerard Manley Hopkins.


Fr. Ugo Nacciarone, S.J.Rev. Ugo Nacciarone, Associate Pastor

Ugo Nacciarone was born in Brooklyn in January of 1933. After a year at Fordham University following high school, he entered the Jesuits in 1950. In addition to his usual Jesuit studies in classics, philosophy and theology, he also obtained a Master’s degree in chemistry. Ordained in 1964, he completed his formation in 1966. In 1967, he was missioned to Africa and remained there for 40 years in Nigeria, Ghana and Zambia. He returned to the New York Province in October 2007 so that he might reflect on his experiences and share them with others.



Kent Tritle Kent Tritle, Director of Music Ministries

Kent Tritle is one of America’s leading choral conductors.  He is founder and Music Director of Sacred Music in a Sacred Space, the acclaimed concert series entering its 21st season at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola in New York City; Music Director of the Oratorio Society of New York and of Musica Sacra; Director of Choral Activities at the Manhattan School of Music; and a member of the graduate faculty of The Juilliard School.  An acclaimed organ virtuoso, he is also the organist of the New York Philharmonic.

In more than 120 concerts presented by the Sacred Music in a Sacred Space series, Kent Tritle has conducted the Choir and Orchestra of St. Ignatius Loyola in a broad repertoire of sacred works, from Renaissance masses and oratorio masterworks to premieres by notable living composers.  During the 2009-2010 season, Mr. Tritle will conduct the U.S. premieres of John Taverner’s Requiem and Valentin Silvestrov’s Diptychon, as well as works by Bach, Handel, Howells, Mozart, Martin, Monteverdi, Pärt, Pinkham, Purcell, Rachmaninov, Steffani and Stravinsky. Last season, Mr. Tritle and the choir performed Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 as part of the city-wide Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds festival, gave the U.S. premiere performance of Gavin Bryars’ On Photography and performed live in the opening festival of radio station WNYC’s new Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, on a concert bill with René Pape, John Zorn, Ute Lemper, and Nico Muhly. 

As Director of Music Ministries at St. Ignatius Loyola, Mr. Tritle oversees a program that annually produces more than 400 services with music. Since his appointment there in 1989, he has led the church’s professional choir to critical acclaim and developed the 50-voice volunteer Parish Community Choir.

Kent Tritle will in 2009-2010 mark his fifth season as Music Director of the Oratorio Society of New York, New York City’s acclaimed 200 voice volunteer chorus. In addition to leading the Society’s annual Messiah performances at Carnegie Hall, he has conducted repertoire such as Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem and Tragic Overture, Paul Moravec’s Songs of Love and War, and the Fauré Requiem. The Oratorio Society recently joined the Juilliard Orchestra in a performance of Bernstein’s Symphony No. 3, “Kaddish,” conducted by Alan Gilbert, part of the Bernstein: The Best of all Possible Worlds festival sponsored by the New York Philharmonic and Carnegie Hall.

In February 2008 Mr. Tritle was appointed Music Director of Musica Sacra, New York’s premier presenter of sacred music performed by a professional chorus in concert halls. Recent concerts have included Scarlatti’s Stabat Mater with J.S. Bach’s Cantata 82 “Ich habe genug” and motets Komm, Jesu komm and Singet dem Herrn at the newly renovated Alice Tully Hall; a program of works by Arvo Pärt and Morton Feldman for a WNYC New Sounds Live concert; Bach’s Mass in B Minor and the annual performances of Handel’s Messiah at Carnegie Hall; performances of Bach’s St. John Passion, Orff’s Carmina Burana with a world premiere by Alessandro Cadario, and a program of Schubert, Mahler and the Brahms Ein Deutsches Requiem at the Rose Theater, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Kent Tritle is renowned as a master clinician, giving workshops on conducting and repertoire.  In 2009-2010 he will give a master class in oratorio at the Metropolitan Opera Guild, as well as master classes in Handel’s Messiah at the Mannes College and in conducting at the Cincinnati chapter of the American Guild of Organists.

From 1996 to 2004, Mr. Tritle was Music Director of the Emmy-nominated Dessoff Choirs, winners of the ASCAP/Chorus America award for adventurous programming of contemporary music. Under his direction the Dessoff Choirs performed with the Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, American Symphony Orchestra, and Czech Philharmonic, as well as in many performances of Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, including a nationally telecast Live from Lincoln Center concert of Mozart’s Requiem.

Mr. Tritle has prepared choruses for conductors Christoph von Dohnányi, Leonard Slatkin, Michael Tilson Thomas, Robert Spano, Gerard Schwarz, Vladimir Spivakov, Nicholas McGegan, Leon Botstein, and Dennis Russell Davies. Among the soloists with whom he has collaborated are singers Renée Fleming, Jessye Norman, Hei-Kyung Hong, Marilyn Horne, Susanne Mentzer, Susan Graham, and Sherrill Milnes; cellist Yo-Yo Ma; pianist André Previn; and actor Tony Randall.

As organist of the New York Philharmonic, Mr. Tritle was recently the soloist in performances of Saint-Saëns’ “Organ” Symphony both at Avery Fisher Hall and in Vail, Colorado. He has appeared often as a guest artist with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. As an organ recitalist he performs regularly in Europe and across the United States; recital venues have included the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Zurich Tonhalle, the Church of St. Sulpice in Paris, King’s College at Cambridge, and Westminster Abbey.  With the Philharmonic he has recorded Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem, Britten’s War Requiem and Henze’s Symphony No. 9, all conducted by Kurt Masur, as well as the Grammy-nominated Sweeney Todd conducted by Andrew Litton. He is featured on the DVD The Organistas and Creating the Stradivarius of Organs.

At the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola, Kent Tritle was artistic consultant on the design and installation of the four-manual, 68-stop mechanical action organ, which was dedicated in 1993. This instrument again drew national attention in July 2007 in a program of organ concertos for the American Guild of Organists conducted by Mr. Tritle, with corresponding critical success.

Kent Tritle has made more than a dozen recordings on the Telarc, AMDG, Epiphany, Gothic, VAI and MSR Classics labels. His most recent CD with the Choir of St. Ignatius Loyola of Schnittke’s Concerto for Choir and Ginastera’s Lamentations of Jeremiah, has been praised by Gramophone and Audiophile Audition and received a four star rating in BBC Music Magazine.

Mr. Tritle holds graduate and undergraduate degrees from The Juilliard School in organ performance and choral conducting and has been on the Juilliard faculty since 1996, currently directing a graduate practicum on oratorio in collaboration with the school’s Vocal Arts Department, and teaching choral conducting. He has been a featured personality on ABC World News Tonight, National Public Radio, and Minnesota Public Radio, as well as in The New York Times and numerous other radio and print outlets.

For more information, sound clips, and updated concert information, visit http://www.kenttritle.com

Visit our Music section for additional Music Staff listings.



Fernando CastroFernando Castro, Treasurer

Fernando Castro joined The Church of St. Ignatius Loyola in March 2005.  He is the Treasurer for St. Ignatius Loyola Church, Grammar School and Day Nursery, as well as the Jesuit Residence. His experience in the finance and non-profit sector spans more than 15 years. Prior to joining St. Ignatius, Mr. Castro was an Outsourcing Manager at Fiscal Management Associates (FMA), LLC, and was responsible for supervising their outsourced accounting engagements, software consulting projects, and fiscal services to start-up organizations.

Mr. Castro’s past positions also include working as a Field Agent with The Internal Revenue Service. In this role, he was responsible for conducting independent audits and related investigations of income tax returns, which covered a diversified spectrum of individual business taxpayers to include sole proprietorships, partnerships, C Corporations, and S Corporations. After leaving the IRS, Mr. Castro founded a tax and consulting firm focused on providing tax, payroll and bookkeeping services, including audits and other finance-related services.  He later sold his practice to take a high level position with FMA.

Mr. Castro holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting from New Jersey City University and became a Certified Public Accountant in 2000.



Sona OlsonSona Olson, Director of Facilities

Sona Olson was hired as the first Director of Facilities of the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola in 2002.  Initially she managed the Grammar School, the Day Nursery, the Church and Rectory and, for a period of three years, Loyola School. She brings property and building management experience of some 30 years. Over the past five years she has managed many projects such as the reconstruction of the classrooms in Loyola School, installation of a new gas fired boiler for the Day Nursery along with a new fire alarm system, the addition of offices in the Rectory, the renovation of Wallace Hall, the restoration of the bronze doors on the Church and the installation of the light boxes in the Narthex of St. Ignatius and St. Lawrence O’Toole to name a few. She is presently project managing the complete renovation of the Grammar School, which is being done in phases and will be completed by 2010. In addition to the day-to-day maintenance operation of the total physical plant, her department was given the scheduling of use of spaces and events.

Sona Olson is a trailblazer: she was the first woman in Operations at Yale University as the Manager of Custodial Services. In this position she managed the maintenance of 10 million square feet, made up of 171 buildings and with a staff of 15 management employees and 435 union employees.  Sona began at Yale as a research assistant in the Department of Sociology, transitioning to an Administrator in a Residential College, then Manager of Custodial Services, over a period of 15 years at Yale.

Leaving Yale in 1981, she joined the Operations Division at Columbia University as Associate Director of Buildings and Grounds. While at Columbia she established a Maintenance Control Center and initiated the lighting of the trees on College Walk for the holiday season.
In 1984, looking for new horizons, she was hired as Vice President for Management by Mendik Realty, a privately owned real estate company that managed 18 million square feet of commercial A grade buildings. There she restored several lobbies of important buildings and established many policies and procedures for managing buildings that are still in use today.  Following Mendik Realty, she worked as Vice President for Asset Management at S.L Green, now a thriving REIT. 

1999 saw Sona Olson deciding to take a breather and try retirement. However, in 2002 there came an inquiry about a new position at St. Ignatius Loyola through the Building Owners and Management Association, a professional organization where Sona served as a Board Member and Chairman of the Seminar Committee. The inquiry turned into the present position of Director of Facilities.

Sona spent 6 years in the Dominican Republic, where she taught English in the Universidad de Santo Domingo and at the Instituto Dominico-Americano. While there, she honed her skill in the Spanish language and is bilingual.  She has two sons married with children, one a management consultant and the other a movie producer. She has stepchildren as well.

She enjoys the challenge of building management and is proud of the staff she manages. Without them, the physical plant at St. Ignatius Loyola would not look as well maintained as it does.  The maintenance team at St. Ignatius Loyola is professional and competent.