On This Date in Nativity History
25 June 2014
On this date, Father Bob Cilinski arrived to become Nativity’s fourth pastor. Father Bob is our first “native son” pastor, the first pastor born in Northern Virginia (in Alexandria). He was the son of Edward and Catherine Cilinski, one of six children in a family where the Church was a constant presence. Two of his uncles were priests, and an aunt was a Holy Cross Sister. He was baptized at St. Louis Parish in Alexandria, where he attended grade school. As a youth, he sang in his school choir and was an altar server at his church’s 6:30 a.m. daily Mass.
Father Bob graduated in 1975 from St. Meinrad College in Indiana and then attended Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland. After graduating from Mount St. Mary’s, he was ordained in the Arlington Diocese in 1979. Father Bob’s first assignment was as parochial vicar of the Cathedral of St. Thomas More in Arlington.
In 1986, after an assignment at Holy Family Parish in Dale City, Father Bob was appointed the first full-time Catholic chaplain at George Mason University where he built his first church, the St. Robert Bellarmine Chapel. After fourteen years at Mason, in 2000 Father Bob returned to parish life as the pastor of All Saints Parish in Manassas. He was pastor at All Saints until 2014 when he came to Nativity.