Lenten Mission

Aidan R. Rooney, C.M., graduated from St. John’s University in New York with a degree in English in 1978. Prior to entering the seminary, he served as technical director for the New York University Graduate Program in Educational Theatre in Manhattan and worked as a professional lighting designer.

Father has been a member of the Congregation of the Mission since 1980 and ordained a priest in 1984, graduating from seminary with his M.Div. and Th.M. in Ritual Studies. After ordination, he served in various positions in the Eastern (USA) Province of the Congregation, including parish, vocation and young adult ministry, and as a lecturer in research methods and statistical analysis for the College of Education graduate division at Niagara. In 2009, he left the United States to serve in the Congregation’s international mission on the Bolivian Altiplano in the territory of the Aymara (indigenous) nation that spans the Bolivia-Peru frontier, and as the international coordinator of the .famvin Digital Network, a web and social media project of the worldwide Vincentian Family.

After returning from Bolivia to Niagara University in 2017 he served there for five years, and in 2022 was chosen to serve as Executive Vice President for Mission at his alma mater.

Fr. Rooney is a published author and editor and continues to volunteer his technical and financial expertise supporting the digital communications structures of the Vincentian Family and heads up its geospatial data mapping homelessness response project. He can be encountered on Instagram and Twitter @fatherratgmail and on the blogging platform “Medium.com.” He speaks English and Spanish and still prays in Aymara, the native tongue of the people of the Bolivian Altiplano.

Currently Father Rooney serves as Executive Vice President for Mission and as a member of St. John’s University’s senior management team, Fr. Rooney directs the Office of University Mission for the Queens, Staten Island, Rome, Paris, and Limerick campuses of St. John's, working to identify, raise awareness, and guide a better understanding and implementation of the University’s Catholic and Vincentian mission to root out the causes of poverty, racism, and human suffering wherever it is found. He also supervises the Office of Campus Ministry, the Vincentian Center for Church and Society, and the Vincentian Institute for Social Action.