Rev. Damian M. Charboneau, OSM: [^E-mail: dcharboneau@assumption-chgo.org] Fr. Damian M. Charboneau. O.S.M. was born in Chicago on July 1,1924. He attended Our Lady of Sorrows Grammar School and St. Philip High School on the West Side and, after a year at St. John's University in Minnesota, he entered the Servite Order in Illinois. Ordained in 1950 he obtained an M.A. in English at Loyola University and taught for many years in a Servite minor seminary, the novitiate program in California, as well as in Servite high schools in Chicago and Denver.

He served as a missionary in Swaziland before returning to the States to take up pastoral duties back in Chicago and in New Jersey. After a sabbatical year in African Studies at U.C.L.A., Fr. Charboneau returned to Swaziland with the U.S. Peace Corps as a lecturer at the university. In 1980 he and two other Servites started a Hispanic parish in Perth Amboy, New Jersey after some months in Puerto Rico learning Spanish. During his ten years in the New Jersey parish, he was also involved in AIDS ministry.