Fr. Aby Thanickal
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Parochial Vicarfrabyaquinasgmail.comFr.Aby was born and brought up in a village in the small state of Kerala in India. He joined the nearby Carmelite religious Monastery in 1997 after his basic school education. In 2001, he did his first profession and became an official member of the congregation of Carmelites of Mary Immaculate (CMI). He completed his 15 years of priestly and religious formation and was ordained as a priest on December 31, 2012. During the formation, for one year he served in the Rustenburg Diocese in South Africa.
He obtained four separate degrees in Philosophy, Theology, Physics and Education from India. After the ordination he served in various parishes as associate pastor and in various schools as a physics teacher, vice principal and finance administrator. In October 2019 he reached the United States to serve in the Diocese of Nashville with the blessings of Most Rev. Bishop Mark Spalding. Before being assigned to St.Thomas Aquinas Church, he was the Parochial Vicar of the Cathedral of Incarnation in Nashville and also served as the chaplain of the Dominican Sisters campus. Father Aby enjoys priestly ministry, music, films, sports, games, delicious food, wine and beer. He loves the biblical words from 1 Corinthians 15:10; "But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them--yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me."
