My Bio

MY BIO

I was born on Sunday January 5, 1969 at 9:27 AM in the small town of Newark, NY – almost midway between Rochester and Syracuse. I was given the name Douglas Daniel Della Pietra – “Douglas” after my Dad’s graduate school roommate and “Daniel” after my Dad.

Although my last name – “Della Pietra,” which means “of the rock” – reveals my Italian heritage, I am also Polish from my Mom’s side of the family. I am proud of sharing in both cultural backgrounds and descents.

I went to Catholic elementary and high schools in Rochester and then to St. John Fisher College. It was during my last two years of college that I seriously began pursuing priesthood. I moved into Becket Hall (located in downtown Rochester) to live with a few other men also considering the possibility of being Catholic priests. After graduating in May 1991 from college and after being accepted as a seminarian for the Catholic Diocese of Rochester, I was off to St. Augustine’s Seminary in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Seminary training before being ordained a priest is currently five years long (four for some dioceses). In those five years, four of them are academic years of study and personal and spiritual formation, and sandwiched in between them is a year of internship – an actual parish church setting. So, on June 29, 1993, I drove my 1983 Chevy Impala packed with boxes full of books, bags of clothing and a few other essentials to my internship assignment in Corning and Painted Post (near the Pennsylvania border).

I spent a very wonderful and blest 13 months in that parish assignment before heading back to Toronto to finish the final two years of study.

In late April 1996, I left the seminary for the last time, returning home for my ordination. On Saturday June 1, 1996 (a beautifully sunny and warm day), I was ordained by Bishop Matthew Clark at Sacred Heart Cathedral in Rochester to the priesthood and assigned as an assistant priest to St. Charles Borromeo Church in Greece, NY beginning the end of that month.

I spent the first four years of priesthood at St. Charles before being assigned to my current parish grouping and ministry in June 2000. Now, I serve two parishes for liturgical celebrations on the weekend, and I coordinate overall the ministries to the area’s hospitals, healthcare facilities and the jail and correctional facility.

With regard to my musical background, I began at the age of seven taking weekly lessons on the accordion. My parents told me that I had to choose a musical instrument, and so I chose the accordion because my dad and grandfather both had one and it made me very curious.

In the fall of 1987, I started playing the acoustic guitar mostly because “church music” didn’t sound that good on the accordion. This led then to some song writing in the late 1980’s – mostly Christian folk-style music. In February 1998, I began writing the first of my reflective or meditative Christian songs for guitar. Finally, in the summer of 1999, I started “doodling” on the piano and have written some piano instrumentals.

When May 2001 came around, the CD project was conceived. Finger Lakes Multimedia and specifically its owner Jim Sawicki started working with me to record my first CD "The Table" with ten songs. The CD was released in April 2002.

On May 20,2005 Fr. Doug, "Shades of Blue" and Michael Della Pietra held a concert at St. Charles Borromeo Church in Rochester, New York. The concert was recorded live by WXXI’s Community Outreach. From those recordings, a professionally mastered CD "Gather At The Table" was produced. The CD was released in September 2005 while I was on a six-month sabbatical to study music at the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas. I lived at St. Ann's Parish in Coppell, Texas, a suburb on the northwest side of Dallas. During that time, I took two courses at the university, and I did some light parish ministry with their Life Teen program, specifically their Life Teen Mass every Sunday. I decided on that particular focus of the sabbatical two years prior when I attended the National Catholic Youth Conference (NCYC) in Houston. I noticed the amazing power of contemporary Catholic Christian music for the youth, and I wanted to immerse myself in
learning about that type of music as well as the needs, hopes and challenges of our youth today.

Since my return from sabbatical, I have been writing new music that has a slightly different musical flavor to it than my earlier songs but still contain a very hopeful, relevant and inspiring message of God's presence in our lives."

Music is a powerful tool for communicating values and beliefs, you can learn more about me, my spirituality and prayer life by listening to my two CD's, "The Table," and "Gather At The Table". You can also learn more about me in the other sections of this website.