CLIFTON, N.J. -- He surely felt his own tears, but the Rev. Michael Joly may have been the only one of the 500 people at St. Philip the Apostle Church yesterday who was unaware of the tears on the faces of his family and his parishioners.
Father Joly, 28, who was ordained Saturday, has been blind since he was 5 years old. His fellow priests at St. Philip the Apostle say he is the only blind man they know of to become a Roman Catholic priest.
Presiding at his first Mass on Sunday was an emotional triumph for Father Joly, a man who could not see, yet took on an education and a calling that are highly dependent on reading. He insists that his story is not about success, but about hope.
"Hope is something divine," he said in an interview afterward. "The only thing I am to anyone who's interested in listening is a committed sign of hope. Look at the power of hope."
He has set out to reproduce some of the essential works of Catholicism in Braille, for himself and for other blind priests.
"I do know that there are other blind priests, but the ones I know of went blind after they became priests," he said.
He read yesterday from a sacramentary, a book used by priests during Mass, that he created with a home computer and a Braille printer.
"I know it's the first one, because I searched the world for one," he said.
He learned to play the guitar, the piano and the organ while growing up in Cumberland, R.I. He also began composing music, which he still does. He said he began taking his faith seriously when he was 17. A year later, he said, he was hired as choir director for Sacred Heart Church in Woonsocket, R.I.
"Music is a medium of the divine," he said. "When you take words and baptize them, they become song."
He decided on the priesthood in his senior year at Rhode Island College, where he received a bachelor's degree in human resource management. Despite graduating magna cum laude, he was turned away by some seminaries because he was blind.
Not to be dissuaded, he gained entry to St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore in 1990 and graduated last June. "I had a conviction that this was an attainable goal and this was God's will," he said.
He relied on methods both ancient and modern to get through college and seminary. At times, he had people read to him. He also read the few assignments that were available in Braille. And he made great use of a computer program that could take an article or a book and convert it to spoken words or printed Braille -- provided that the work was already available on computer disk.
Only last year did he acquire the invention that will allow him almost unlimited reading -- a computer scanner that can read a printed page out loud.
He acknowledged that the means to do what he has done did not exist even a generation ago. But he quickly added, "Technology has made it easier, but what has made my vocation possible is God's will."
Last June, he came to St. Philip the Apostle, a parish in the Paterson Diocese with a large congregation and a school of 600 students.
"The people here have fallen in love with him," said the Rev. Bob Gordon, a fellow priest.
Father Joly was the eighth of 10 children, who were reared by their father, Armand Joly, a police officer and salesman. When he was 5, Michael developed a brain tumor, and the surgery to remove the growth left him blind.
"The key is, he's never considered himself handicapped," Ms. McNally said. "He's always wanted to do what anyone else could do, and he usually ended up doing it better."