New Leadership -
[Cached Version]
Published on: 10/23/2002
Last Visited: 11/26/2002
Father John C. Barth, M.M., 49, was elected Assistant General.Father Barth currently serves as a member of the Maryknoll mission education and promotion team working in the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut area.
"As a member of the leadership team, I hope to build unity and enthusiasm among Society members, while supporting further collaboration among the four Maryknoll entities," said Barth.I also want to encourage more Americans to participate in mission in long, medium and short-term commitments."
Ordained a priest on June 1, 1991, Barth has served for 10 years with the Maryknoll mission team in Cambodia.There he provided pastoral care to ethnic Vietnamese Catholics living in villages along the Mekong and Bassac Rivers of Central Cambodia, as well as the foreign Catholic community living in Phnom Penh.He founded the organization, Rehabilitation for Blind Cambodians, to train social workers to help the incurably blind, train eye doctors and eye nurses, and to build and operate a 43 bed eye hospital for the poor in Takeo.In 2001 the organization offered more than 3,500 eye operations.Prior to joining Maryknoll in 1984, Father Barth worked for the New York State Health Department, administering health care programs in medically underserved rural areas of the state.
Born in Buffalo, N.Y., on Nov. 16, 1952, he attended St. Luke's High School in Hohokus, N.J. (1966-69) and graduated from Paramus Catholic High School, Paramus, N.J. in 1970.He holds a bachelor's degree in biology from Canisius College, Buffalo (1974), a master's degree in business administration, with a specialty in health systems, from the State University of New York at Buffalo (1977) and a Master of Divinity degree from Maryknoll School of Theology, Ossining (1991).