Clergy

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Father Frank Alagna
Father Frank was called to serve as Priest in Charge of Holy Cross+Santa Cruz in the fall of 2011. He was born and raised in Brooklyn. His roots are ethnically Italian and religiously Roman Catholic.  Experiencing a call to the priesthood at a fairly young age, he entered the seminary after high school and trained to become a Maryknoll priest. Ordained in 1971, his first assignment was development work for Maryknoll in the Pacific Northwest. In addition to fund-raising activities, he also served as a chaplain at the University of Washington and Seattle University. His next assignment took him to Hong Kong for three years. He returned from the Orient in 1977 to begin a graduate program in Psychology at the University of Connecticut. He was awarded his Ph.D. in 1980. In that same year, Father Frank was received into the Episcopal Church as a priest.

He has ministered at Christ and Saint Stephen’s on the Upper West Side, served as Vicar of St. Margaret’s in Staatsburg for 18 years and, most recently, as Interim at St. Andrew’s in Beacon. At Christ and St. Stephen’s he developed a community counseling service. While at St. Margaret’s he established the “Justice for All” Speakers Forum as a social justice and ecumenical outreach of the parish and also initiated a service program for Latinos. At St. Andrew’s he launched an Inter-Parish Initiative to effect a closer working relationship between St. Andrew’s and St. Luke’s.

Upon his appointment to Holy Cross + Santa Cruz, Father Frank said, “My first passion remains the person and mystery of Jesus Christ. After these many years as a believer and as a priest I still find the Gospel the best news that I could ever imagine hearing. That God loves us with a love beyond all telling simply because this is who He is, no matter who and what we are, and in spite of whatever we may do, provides an experience of peace, joy and hope that the world simply cannot give. I come to Holy Cross + Santa Cruz to live this mystery with you.”

Father Frank has initiated and remained involved in many of our ministries into the community, including the Ulster Immigrant Defense Network.

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Madre Filomena Servelon
Madre Filomena was born in Honduras into a Roman Catholic family. She lost her mother at the age of 19 months, and she and her three sisters and one brother were raised by their maternal grandparents.

Madre Filomena came to this country in January 1985. She remembers it was a Saturday. The next day she was invited by her sister Betty to attend Sunday services with her at her parish church. It was an Episcopal church. This was her first visit to an Episcopal Church and from that day she has made it her faith home.

Madre Filomena is divorced. Her daughter Claudia is married to Rudy and they have two children, Joshua who is 8 years old and Tiffany who is 5 months old. Madre Filomena delights in being a grandmother. It brings her a great deal of happiness. After being credentialed and employed as an elementary school teacher, she earned a BA in Social Work. In May 2006 she was awarded a Masters in Divinity degree from General Theological Seminary.

Madre Filomena got her exposure as a lay person to the Episcopal Church at both San Andres in Yonkers and Grace Church in White Plains. St. John’s in Getty Square in Yonkers sponsored her as a candidate for ordination to the priesthood.

She spent the diaconal year of her formation at St. Edward the Martyr in New York City. After her ordination to the priesthood she served for one year as an assistant priest at the Church of the Mediator in the Bronx. Most recently she served for three years as priest at San Juan Bautista.

Madre Filomena came to Holy Cross + Santa Cruz as Priest-in-Charge of the Latino ministry within the parish in December 2012. At the same time she assumed her responsibilities as Priest-in-Charge of Our Lady of Guadalupe parish in Poughkeepsie. Her ministry takes her back and forth between both parishes but she lives in the Rectory in Kingston.