St. John the Evangelist Church in Riverhead bids farewell to Pastor Larry Duncklee

The Rev. Larry Duncklee, who has served as pastor at St. John the Evangelist Church in Riverhead since June 2011, has been transferred to St. Joseph’s in Babylon.

His time at St. John’s has flown by, he said, yet he’s been pastor in the Riverhead parish two years longer than the 12-year maximum common in the diocese.

“The people here are wonderful,” Duncklee said, acknowledging that it’s hard to leave for a new parish when called by the bishop to do so. “I never lived anywhere for this long in my life,” he said in an interview last week.

“It was a privilege and honor to live with Bishop Wcela for 11 of those years,” he said, referring to the late retired auxiliary bishop of Rockville Centre, who resided at the St. John’s rectory, “and to work with Sister Margaret Smyth,” who ran the North Fork Hispanic Apostolate ministry out of offices in the former St. John’s Elementary School. Both Wcela and Smyth passed away in 2022. “They were both incredible people,” Duncklee said.

Duncklee replaced the Rev. Thomas Coby, whose 12-year pastorate was one marked by tough decisions, most notably the controversial decision to close the financially strapped parish elementary school that was straining parish coffers. It was a tumultuous time for the parish, one that included the pastor filing a $1.25 million defamation lawsuit against several parishioners and past parishioners in 2003. The case was settled in 2008.

The controversy surrounding the school’s closure was quelled before Duncklee arrived in 2011, but financial problems lingered.

“We were broke when I got here,” Duncklee said. 

“The people responded. We paid off our debt and were able to do a lot of capital repairs and improvements. We put in ramps, boilers and added a new bathroom in the church,” he said. 

“Like many parishes, because of the bankruptcy payout, more than half our reserves went into the payout,” Duncklee said. Unfortunately, that’s something the new pastor will have to continue to work on rebuilding, he said.

Duncklee is being succeeded by the Rev. Gonzalo Oajaca-Lopez, who currently pastors two parishes in Suffolk, St. Sylvester in Medford and Church of the Resurrection in Farmingville.

Oajaca-Lopez, a native of Guatemala, is “a very good guy,” Duncklee said. He was introduced to him by Bishop Wcela, who “really liked and respected him.”

St. John’s parish community is about half Hispanic, Duncklee noted. The Spanish-language Mass on Sunday evenings usually draws a standing-room only crowd.

“Obviously he must be talented to be running two parishes,” he said.

Duncklee, 70, was ordained 45 years ago and has spent the last 28 years as a pastor, serving in four different parishes.

He came to St. John the Evangelist Church from Our Lady of Good Counsel Church in Inwood. It was a much smaller parish, Duncklee said. “St. John the Evangelist parish is 69 ½ square miles and has a hospital we cover pretty much full time.”

In his 45 years as a priest, Duncklee said, he’s forged many friendships that last beyond his days at a particular parish. And he’s made some wonderful friends in Riverhead, he said.

“It happens in every parish,” he said. “In every parish you connect with people, you do their children’s baptisms and weddings,  and the connections are forever. It’s always a blessing,” he said.

Priests, he said, “have our own families but then we have a family wherever we go. That’s how I see a parish. I see it as a family.”

Moving west to Babylon will make it easier for Duncklee to spend time with  his sisters and cousins, who live in western Long Island, and he’s looking forward to that, he said.

His family at St. John’s parish gave the pastor two send-offs last week, one at the church and one at Baiting Hollow Country Club on June 19.

Duncklee celebrated his last Mass as pastor of St. John’s yesterday at 8 a.m.