Our new pastor, Father Stephen Fichter, was born at Englewood Hospital in August 1967. As the third of four children of Annette and Joseph Fichter, he grew up in Tenafly where he attended public elementary school. He received his First Communion here at Sacred Heart on May 11, 1975.

He graduated as salutatorian of Bergen Catholic High School’s Class of 1985. That summer he worked at the NYSE and then moved to San Francisco for the next nine months to work at a firm on the Pacific Stock Exchange. The next summer he spent hitchhiking through rural Ireland, where he made the decision to enter the seminary. After two years of training in the United States, he was sent to Spain to study the Classical Humanities (Greek, Latin, Art, History, etc.). He then returned to the United States to teach Latin and Spanish to English-speaking seminarians. From 1990 to 1993, Father Stephen returned to Ireland as Assistant Novice Master, and then traveled to Rome, where he resided for the next seven years. During that time in the Eternal City, he was Vice Rector of two seminaries and the CFO of a religious order. Father Stephen was ordained to the priesthood in Rome by Cardinal Lucas Moriera Neves on the very first day of the new millennium (January 1, 2000), which also happened to be Father Steve’s father’s 60th birthday.

He returned to the United States, after being overseas for more than a decade, to work as the parochial vicar at Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Ridgewood and then at Saint Gabriel the Archangel in Saddle River. While in Europe, he obtained the equivalent of two Masters degrees in Philosophy and Theology. Upon his return to this country, he enrolled in Fordham University’s Graduate School of Social Service from where he obtained a Masters in Social Work degree in 2003, with a specialization in research.

At the same time, he taught two courses (World Religions and Introduction to Philosophy) at Bergen Community College. He obtained a PhD in Sociology of Religion at Rutgers University on November 14, 2008. Archbishop Myers recently appointed him as pastor of Sacred Heart and Bishop Flesey installed him on September 14, 2008.

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