Father Robert Charlton, SS.CC.

From international sales,
the priesthood called him to
service with Congregation
of the Sacred Hearts
of Jesus and Mary

By R. DANIEL CAVAZOS
The Valley Catholic

      HARLINGEN — Father Bob Charlton grew up in the Catholic faith and its school systems every step along the way during his Philadelphia upbringing.
      He always knew a religious life lay ahead. It could be as a missionary – or perhaps a priest – but whatever the road taken, a “communal life of being religious” would be there. The path appeared set after four years of college and over a year of theology school.
     His studies, however, were buffeted the by tenor of the times. It was the 1970s when Father Charlton said many priests were leaving their vocations. He was influenced by those factors at his seminary school.
     “I quit,’’ he recalled. “I said, ‘I’m not doing this anymore.’”
     He worked in the private sector for the next few years, making a nice living in international sales for freight systems. Father Charlton recalled the lucrative salary he made and the Brooks Brother suits he wore. There was something more powerful beckoning, “an irresistible thing,” as he described it.
   He wanted back into seminary school. “The superiors in charge of the seminary welcomed me back,” he said. “They said, ‘You should have never left.’”

Return to Religious Roots

     Back on track, he proceeded through his studies and training, and in 1988 was ordained as a priest in
Washington D.C.
     Long by that time and going back to his Philadelphia childhood, Father Charlton was anchored religiously in the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. It is a Roman Catholic religious institute of priests, nuns, and brothers, the origins going back to the French Revolution in the 1790s.

     One of the Sacred Hearts’ more historical figures is Father Damien, who is best known for his dedication in caring for the victims of leprosy in Hawaii in the 1870s. As a teenager in Philadelphia, Father Charlton read a book about Father Damien, which dazzled him – so much so that after reading the book and being inspired, he knew “that sealed it for me.”
     Father Charlton marked 50 years this summer of his association with the Sacred Hearts and its stated mission of introducing “the spirit of devotion and love in the hearts of others, talk to them about the love of God and of the benefits we have received from Jesus Christ, and of the tender devotion to our Blessed Mother.”
  His first parishes as a priest were in Massachusetts, where over the years he has developed an affinity and connection to the New England region. There is another region he has come to know well – far from the Northeast – and as coincidence would have it, a Sacred Heart he would serve as a priest.

Coming to the RGV

Father Charlton arrived in Edinburg at the halfway point of the August – the first decade of the 2000s.
     The Sacred Heart Catholic Church on Kuhn Street, just blocks from downtown Edinburg, is the religious assignment Father Charlton received in coming to the Rio Grande Valley. It was a church and parish in
transition when he arrived.
     Sacred Heart Parish of Edinburg was established in the post-World War II era. It has long been an anchor on the city’s east side. Its historic church building was no longer sufficient in size to house all the celebrants who wished to attend Mass. Edinburg was growing rapidly to the north and east.
     Should a new parish church remain near downtown or relocate to where the city was growing? Under Father Charlton’s guidance, it was decided that Sacred Heart would remain at its present location and just across the street from its historic home.
     “We decided to stay,” Father Charlton said of the decision, and a multiyear planning and building project that resulted in a new Sacred Heart Church being completed in 2011. “We didn’t want to be another entity to leave downtown.”

     Father Charlton spent nine rewarding and spiritual years in Edinburg before being called back to Massachusetts, where he thought he would end his years of being an active priest. Then in 2018, as “God’s plan unfolds,” as he put it, Father Charlton was assigned back to the Valley.
     “I got sent to Harlingen,” he said of his current ministry at Queen of Peace Catholic Church on New
Combs Highway. “It was a big shock.”
     Shock it may have been, but being back in the Valley meant returning to a region where congregants delight in the Gospel and speaking of their spiritual lives and faith.
     “The Valley is like an island of faith,” Father Charlton said. “People in many parts of the country act like they’ve never heard of the gospels. Here in the Valley, people are not embarrassed to talk about it, (their faith).
     “The work here is different from other parts of the country,” he said. “It’s better in some ways. In Philadelphia, if you talk about your faith openly, they look at you like you have two heads. In the Valley, it’s very different in how people here are so open.
     "That’s the delightful part.”