Baptisms by Arizona priest presumed invalid due to error

PHOENIX (AP) — The Catholic Church said baptisms performed by a priest who served in Arizona for 16 years are now presumed to be invalid because he used incorrect wording on a subtle but key component of the sacrament.

It’s unknown how many baptisms were affected by the incorrect phrasing used by the Rev. Andres Arango, who served in three parishes in metro Phoenix from September 2005 until his resignation effective Feb. 1. The Diocese of Phoenix said if a baptism is invalid, other Catholic sacraments received by a person may have to be repeated after he or she receives a valid baptism.

The diocese, which is trying to identify people baptized by Arango, set up a frequently asked questions section on its website to confront issues related to the botched baptisms and created a form for people who were initiated into the church by Arango to complete.

Arango’s error was in saying, “We baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” when he should have begun the sentence by saying, “I baptize you.”

“The issue with using ‘We’ is that it is not the community that baptizes a person, rather, it is Christ, and Christ alone, who presides at all of the sacraments, and so it is Christ Jesus who baptizes,” Bishop Thomas Olmsted wrote in a mid-January message on the diocese’s site.

The Vatican in June 2020 issued the guidance declaring that the formula “We baptize you…” was invalid and that anyone who was baptized using it must be re-baptized using the proper formula. The Vatican said it was taking action because some unnamed priests were using the “We” formula to make the baptism more of a communal affair involving parents, godparents and the community welcoming a new member into the Catholic Church.

Arango was the pastor of the St. Gregory Parish in Phoenix. Before coming to Arizona in 2005, Arango served the church in San Diego and Brazil.

Kevin Eckery, director of external and community relations at the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego, said the diocese told people who think they might have been baptized by Arango to talk with their parish priest, get their baptism certificate to confirm and get baptized again if they fear their baptism would be invalid.

“It’s relatively easy to fix it. The parish priest can take care of this quickly — if they want to be re-baptized, they can be,” Eckery said.

In an undated note on the diocese’s site, Arango wrote: “It saddens me to learn that I have performed invalid baptisms throughout my ministry as a priest by regularly using an incorrect formula. I deeply regret my error and how this has affected numerous people in your parish and elsewhere.”

In Detroit, church officials in 2020 said a deacon used the wrong words while baptizing people from 1986 to 1999. The most dramatic consequence involved a priest who was baptized by the deacon as a boy.

Because the baptism was invalid, so was the 2017 priestly ordination of the Rev. Matthew Hood, who discovered the wrong words while watching a video of his childhood baptism, the archdiocese said.

The archdiocese said marriages performed by Hood might not be valid. It urged couples to speak to their pastor as soon as possible “so any steps can be taken to remedy your marital status in the church, if necessary.”

Hood was baptized again and ordained as a priest a second time.

Something similar occurred in Oklahoma in 2020. A new priest, the Rev. Zachary Boazman, learned that his baptism was invalid because of wrong words.

Oklahoma City Archbishop Paul Coakley subsequently validated the marriages performed by Boazman. He was baptized and ordained as a priest again.

Katie Burke, a spokesperson for the Diocese of Phoenix, said rank-and-file Catholics brought the issue on Arango’s baptisms to the attention of the diocese.

“Likely, the people who heard it happen in Phoenix were aware of these other stories and therefore knew the phrasing to be incorrect,” Burke said.

Burke said the diocese was not aware of any seminarians, deacons, or priests who were invalidly baptized by Arango. ___ Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. ___ Dell’Orto reported from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Associated Press writers Ed White in Detroit and Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this report.

Jacques Billeaud And Giovanna Dell’orto, The Associated Press