Beloved diocesan priest Father John Vieira, a jovial and straight-talking pastor whose years of active ministry were cut short by his Alzheimer’s diagnosis, died Aug. 12 from the combined effects of the disease and the COVID-19 virus.
Fr. Vieira had been retired and living with family in Central California since 2020. He was 60 years old.
Ordained a priest on May 23, 1997, Fr. Vieira ministered at St. Edward Parish in Corona, Holy Family Parish in Hesperia and the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mecca. He served as administrator of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Indio from 2002 to 2005, and then as pastor of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Ontario from 2008 until his retirement in 2018.
In June of that year, it was announced that Fr. Vieira was retiring from active ministry because of the early onset of Alzheimer’s Disease. It was a devastating turn of events for many in the parish but Fr. Vieira, in a 2018 interview with the BYTE, addressed it with his typical matter-of-factness.
“You have to live with it,” he said of his Alzheimer’s. “You have to keep on truckin’, doing the things you can do.”
Fr. Vieira continued to live at St. Elizabeth after his retirement. A native of Ontario, he shared the Portuguese heritage of many in his parish and he continued to celebrate a weekly Mass in their language.
In 2020, as his condition worsened, he relocated to the Central California city of Hanford to be with family and receive care.
Father Erik Esparza, Director of Priest Personnel for the Diocese and Pastor of The Holy Name of Jesus Parish in Redlands, was a young man involved in youth ministry at Holy Family Parish when he first met Fr. Vieira, who was completing his internship at the parish as a seminarian.
“I came to know Fr. John as being so relatable, funny, and kind,” Fr. Esparza recalls. “As a young man, [he] helped me to discern a call to the priesthood. He was supportive from the beginning of my time in the seminary, on my ordination day and over the years in ministry.”
A Mass of Resurrection for Fr. Vieira will be celebrated on Sept. 28 at 10 am at St. Paul the Apostle Church in Chino Hills.