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Meet seminarians: Wojciech Gierasimczyk, Sam Morehead, Juan Manuel Bonilla Naranjo and Juan Bonilla
On April 16, four men attending the two seminaries of the Denver Archdiocese will be ordained to the diaconate as a step in their priesthood formation. Profiles of the four men are below.
- Wojciech Gierasimczyk, 30, of Poland
- Samuel Morehead, 27, of Berthoud, Colo.
- Juan Manuel Bonilla Naranjo, 28, of Ecaudor
- Ryan O'Neill, 27, of Fort Collins, Colo.
Name: Wojciech Mariusz Gierasimczyk
Birth date: June 14, 1980
Where born and reared: Gorzow Wielkopolski, Poland
Seminary: Redemptoris Mater Archdiocesan Missionary Seminary
Q: Describe your educational and professional background before entering formation.
A: In 2002 I graduated from college in Poland with a degree in economics (baccalaureate).
Q: What first interested you in the priesthood?
A: When I was a child my family always went to Sunday Mass. I remember being aware that the priest was doing something I could not do it. The priest appeared mysterious to me and I wanted to know what was this mystery was about.
Q: When did you first feel called to the priesthood?
A: When I was a child. I remember there were times when I expressed my desire to be a priest.
Q: What ultimately led you to enter the seminary?
A: The experience of the word of God and the sacraments as being capable of changing the lives of people. This experience came through the Neocatechumenal Way (a Vatican approved, post-baptismal catechumenate). There I discovered that God has a plan for my life and that he is not disgusted with my sins. It helped me to see the Church as a loving Mother who cares about her children, rather than as an institution that wants to control people.
Q: Where did you find support for your call to the priesthood?
A: I experienced support for my call from the Church. Behind my vocation are brothers and sisters who help me to move ahead through their prayers, words of encouragement and words that call me to conversion. Besides that, the Church teaches me to pray, to forgive, to serve and to seek the will of God every day. I am very grateful to my family, my community, and the seminary for the support they offer to me on my journey toward priesthood.
Q: What are you most looking forward to about the priesthood?
A: As a priest I will be called to bring salvation to people—to show the way to heaven. This can be done thorough preaching and the sacraments.
Q: What do you find most daunting about the priesthood?
A: There are many temptations and difficulties in the life of a priest: loneliness, misunderstandings, spiritual dryness, routine, persecutions, rejection, etc. Yet, God does not tempt nor does he allow harm that is beyond my capacity. There is a way out of all the difficulties and problems though Jesus Christ. Most important is to have confidence in the Lord who is always ready to help.
Q: What has been your favorite class or aspect of seminary life?
A: I really liked the classes given by Sister Timothea Elliot who taught Scripture. I could sense that she had a profound love for the Scriptures.
Q: What is your favorite pastime?
A: To play ping-pong.
Q: Is there a particular talent or gift you feel you bring to the seminary community and,
eventually, to the Church as a whole?
A: I do not have a particular talent apart from playing the guitar. However, I know that God is able to equip me with all the necessary graces and gifts needed for my mission.
Q: In today's world, a call to celibacy is seen as radical, if not impossible. How have you reconciled the priesthood's call to celibacy with this challenging cultural perspective?
A: I do not think that living a celibate life makes me less valuable or unfulfilled. Both marriage and priesthood require love. Love is letting my ego die for the other. Husbands need to die for their wives and wives need to die for their husbands. Otherwise, marriage will not stand. This love comes freely from God.
As a priest, I will be called “Father.” And I think there is no difference between the father of a family and a father/priest. The priest, in the same way as the father of a family, needs to provide food for his children and this food is the Eucharist. The priest also teaches and instructs his children and this is done by preaching and catechetical instructions. The priest is called to love the Church as the husband is called to love his wife. There are many aspects where the parallelism can be drawn. Having the grace of loving the other, of serving others unconditionally is the source of happiness. So, the main point of celibate and of married life is the donating of oneself to the other. Without this self-donation, life is miserable.
Q: If you have been on mission (or itinerancy) as part of your formation thus far, share where you went and what you learned from that experience.
A: I spent three years on itinerancy in Arizona, mainly in the Diocese of Phoenix. I was part of a missionary team that included a married couple with 13 children, a priest and a lay person. Primarily we catechized in the parishes and we led communities through the catechetical itinerary of the Neocatechumenal Way. It was a great time for me. First of all, it was an experience of faith. I experienced that God, in the midst of precariousness and difficulties, really provides and that he is not stingy. Second, It was also a time when I witnessed miracles in the lives of many people. We saw families rebuilt, couples reconciling and opening themselves to life, people leaving behind their addictions, youths eagerly seeking their vocation. This experience told me it is worthy to become a priest. Everything was done through the poverty of the preaching and the sacraments.
Q: Can you recall a particular moment when you have been called to give testimony to your faith, or more particularly, to your vocation to the priesthood?
A: In Arizona we had a mission of going two-by-two from house-to-house announcing the good news. In one of the houses we met a Croatian man who declared himself to be a lapsed Catholic and an atheist. We began to give our experience of faith and we spent a considerable time with him. At the end of the encounter, we saw tears in this man’s eyes.
Q: How do you feel about this significant step, being ordained to the diaconate, in your formation?
A: Enthusiastic, with a little a bit of anxiety.
Name: Samuel Alan Morehead
Birth date: Feb. 9, 1984
Where born and reared: Born at Boulder; raised my entire life before college in Berthoud
Seminary: St. John Vianney Theological Seminary
Q: Describe your educational and professional background before entering formation.
A: After graduating valedictorian from Berthoud High School in 2002, I attended the University of Colorado at Boulder for three years, during which time I majored in broadcast journalism. However, I discerned I was called to enter the seminary and pursue the priestly vocation before graduating from CU. I have earned two degrees while in the seminary, both in philosophy. I received a Baccalaureate of Philosophy from the Pontifical Lateran University in 2008 and a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from Regis University the same year. Presently, I am completing two degrees in sacred theology.
Q: What first interested you in the priesthood?
A: My interest in the priesthood grew out of a deeper desire to know, love, and serve God in a committed, consecrated way—an idea that captured me even from my youth. Additionally, I was attracted to the priesthood by the powerful example of priests who were heroically and selflessly living out this vocation for love of the people of God.
Q: When did you first feel called to the priesthood?
A: The first inklings of a vocation I can trace to a pilgrimage to an ancient church in England upon a school visit at the age of 13. I perceived, while praying in the silence of this majestic abbey, which had been hallowed by centuries of prayer and the presence of numerous saints and martyrs, that the Lord was inviting me, in the most profound way, to make my home in the Church. The stirrings of a vocation became elaborated at the end of high school and throughout my years at university when I was presented with the real option of serving the Lord entirely, with the whole my life, as his priest.
Q: What ultimately led you to enter the seminary?
A: During the course of my junior year at CU-Boulder, I was posed with the question, What am I waiting for? However much I enjoyed my time at CU—which I did—I had come to the certain conclusion that the Lord was inviting me to enter the seminary and pursue the matter of discerning directly this feeling of my being called to the priesthood. I knew it would require an act of faith and courage to “drop out” of college and to go the seminary; but even this excited me.
Q: Where did you find support for your call to the priesthood?
A: I have been incredibly blessed to find great support from many persons in all directions as I discerned a priestly vocation and as I have progressed in formation unto ordination. First of all, my family has been incredibly supportive and encouraging. Several years ago my mother made the beautiful observation perhaps only a mother could make: “Sam, this is who you were meant to be. All of your life, even from your childhood, makes sense in light of your vocation.” I have been blessed by the support from friends, including those from high school, college, and especially my brother seminarians. Of course, there is the undeniable support of the faithful of the archdiocese, including the Knights of Columbus and the Serra Club, who sacrifice so much for vocations.
Q: What are you most looking forward to about the priesthood?
A: Presently, I am most looking forward to being an instrument of encounter between Christ and those whom he so loves and with whom he longs to be united, especially those who are distant from him for any reason. Moreover, I look forward to being able to offer the Sacrifice of the Mass, to bring Jesus to those who hunger for God. Also, I am very much looking forward to being in a simple, humble instrument of the Lord’s healing mercy and compassion in the sacrament of penance.
Q: What do you find most daunting about the priesthood?
A: As I anticipate ordination, I find the challenge of effectively preaching to a highly secularized, postmodern culture, which is often apathetic to the Gospel and the very person of Jesus Christ, to be the most daunting aspect of diaconal and priestly ministry. I ask myself, “How will I get through to the people, particularly to those distant from Christ and the Church, to those who could care less?”
Q: What has been your favorite class or aspect of seminary life?
A: Sacramental theology is my favorite area of study in the seminary. I deeply enjoy any class that delves into that beautiful, mysterious work of God as he perpetuates the Incarnation through the ministry of the Church by touching, healing, and saving individual persons through the sacraments. In addition to my studies, I find the seminary brotherhood to be my favorite aspect of the seminary, for it is precisely in this common life, this band of brothers that I have found my best friends, my day-to-day support system, and a constant inspiration to holiness and generosity.
Q: What is your favorite pastime?
A: One of my favorite pastimes is playing games, be they board games or otherwise. Growing up, my family always played any number of board games, backyard games, dominos, etc. together. In fact, we still play all these games whenever I am home. I still get the opportunity to play games with brothers in seminary on community nights and other special occasions. I am particularly fond of trivia games. All throughout college, I went every week to a restaurant and sports bar to play team trivia with a group of friends. It was a great occasion for fun and for discussing the faith.
Q: Is there a particular talent or gift you feel you bring to the seminary community and, eventually, to the Church as a whole?
A: Throughout my years in the seminary, I have been repeatedly affirmed in my leadership skills: my ability to draw persons together, to highlight and encourage the gifts of others, to organize community activities, and to facilitate good communication. I hope that these skills, which were developed in part through my participation in the CU President’s Leadership Class and have matured at the seminary, will be put to good use for the Church. Some of my other talents include writing (I once interned for the Denver Catholic Register), theater (I have acted in every seminary play), graphic design (I help produce most of the archdiocesan liturgical aids), and even sewing (I have become the seminary house tailor).
Q: In today’s world, a call to celibacy is seen as radical, if not impossible. How have you reconciled the priesthood’s call to celibacy with this challenging cultural perspective?
A: The call to celibacy is a call from Christ to the candidate for the priesthood to embrace most profoundly and definitively a life of true intimacy with the Lord and for his body, the Church. While never denying the good of married life and a well-ordered human sexuality, I have increasingly come to see and appreciate the inadequacies of the wider culture’s understanding of sexuality, which is largely hedonistic and removed from the essential dynamic of sacrifice and the true gift of one person in his totality to another, which together constitute true love. Yet, because I have experienced the love of Christ for me directly and personally and have received the invitation to love him reciprocally, there is a feeling of joy, satisfaction and personal fulfillment in offering my life and deepest love to Christ and to his Church. True love is a life given away for another. The love of the priesthood is a life given away to Christ in holy celibacy for the good of the Church and the whole world.
Q: Can you recall a particular moment when you have been called to give testimony to your faith, or more particularly, to your vocation to the priesthood?
A: The Lord has blessed me with so many opportunities to witness to him and to speak of the beauty of the Catholic faith through my testimony as a seminarian, not only in the archdiocese but even in other countries and on other continents upon my travels for pilgrimage and study. I recently learned that a woman returned to the Church after decades away and not-practicing the faith following a tour I gave of the seminary’s extraordinarily beautiful and catechetical Christ the King Chapel. I also remember speaking about being a seminarian and—through that experience—witnessing to Christ when I met a young Muslim man who was working at a Starbucks in the heart of London two years ago and who was very interested in learning about my life as a future priest, Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church. I still pray for this barista, who, interestingly, shares the name Samuel. But these are only two stories of many.
Q: How do you feel about this significant step, being ordained to the diaconate, in your formation?
A: Presently, I am overjoyed and enthused by the prospect of being ordained a deacon, especially right before Holy Week. What could be more beautiful than to begin clerical life in service to Christ and his Church than by being consecrated to Christ in this capacity as he sets off to suffer, die and rise again for love of the whole world? My prayer before ordination is to be a worthy collaborator in Christ’s redemptive work, which defines Holy Week. Moreover, I am enthused about diaconal ordination because of the beauty of this foundation ministry. All of my ordained life is ultimately to be grounded on the reality that I am a servant of God and of his people, configured to Christ, who came “not to be served, but to serve.”
Name: Juan Manuel Bonilla Naranjo
Birth date: April 14, 1983
Where born: Ambato, Ecuador
Where reared: Alobamba (near Ambato, Ecuador)
Seminary: Redemptoris Mater Archdiocesan Missionary Seminary
Q: Describe your educational and professional background before entering formation.
A: Secondary school: I. T. S. Juan Fco. Montalvo in Ambato, Ecuador; from 1995-2001.
Q: What first interested you in the priesthood?
A: My house was very near to the church; for this reason my family was close to the priest. I felt priesthood was an option for my life. But when I began my teen years the thought of celibacy, living “alone” and so forth did not seem too appealing any more. Living my life in a superficial way with friends who were as superficial as I was did not help me to make the definitive decision, the leap of faith.
Q: When did you first feel called to the priesthood?
A: My relationship with my parents was not the best because I was not able to appreciate their love, so I was always looking for love and attention. When my parents went to a Neocatechumenal Way catechesis (a Vatican approved, post-baptismal catechumenate) I went with them thinking that through the Church I would find the attention I was looking for. There I heard something I did not expect. I heard the announcement of the love of God for me. The unconditional love I was looking for in my parents comes only from God. He is the only one who is able to love me as I am.
This news gave new meaning to my life. What before seemed very difficult, now was possible. Through those catecheses I entered a Neocatechumenal Way community with my parents and older brother. After a time, my older brother attended some vocational meetings. Through his experience I began considering becoming a missionary priest.
Q: What ultimately led you to enter the seminary?
A: At the beginning I was not fully convinced of God’s call. I was looking for fulfillment in the only way that I knew how, through studies. I wanted to become a computer engineer. Those in charge of the vocational center my brother was attending would come to our house to encourage him. Since they were also friends of mine, I attended some of the meetings they had with my brother. The encouragement they gave to him was like water for the seed I already had. At first I did not want to give in because of misconceptions and fears I had about the priesthood regarding celibacy, living my life alone, and leaving my country and family. I was reluctant to move forward in the path set before me.
At a retreat I had with my Neocatechumenal Way community there was a vocational call. I had heard that call many times but this time it was different for me. For the first time I was consciously considering that God might be calling me. Until then I did not feel my life was meaningful; there was always something lacking. I saw that I had tried many things to give meaning to my life—I had tried everything but God. This time, I took the call seriously. I then entered a pre-vocational center to discern if this was truly God’s will or just a warm feeling.
As the first step, I attended a vocational group. I was instructed to pray the rosary on a daily basis, something I wasn’t used to. I did that as a sign to the Lord that I would not escape any more. The Lord accepted that sign. After a few months I was sent to Denver, where I have been since 2002.
Q: Where did you find support for your call to the priesthood?
A: In my Neocatechumenal Way communities in Ecuador and in Denver. Also in many ecclesiastical realities, among them the Knights of Columbus and Serra Club, who support all of us seminarians spiritually and financially.
Q: What are you most looking forward to about the priesthood?
A: To participate in the new evangelization. Many people are living life without meaning, as l was. The Lord has allowed me to go through many experiences of his power as well as my rebellion as preparation for a concrete mission.
Q: What do you find most daunting about holy orders?
A: When I see it with a “human eye” the diaconate is almost impossible, but then I remember the wonders God has done in my life and I realize that it is God’s work and I just need to give my fiat (yes).
Q: What has been your favorite class or aspect of seminary life?
A: Scripture classes.
Q: What is your favorite pastime?
A: To work with computers.
Q: Is there a particular talent or gift you feel you bring to the seminary community and, eventually, to the Church as a whole?
A: I am not a very skillful person, but I know that the Lord can feed a multitude with five loves and two fish.
Q: In today's world, a call to celibacy is seen as radical, if not impossible. How have you reconciled the priesthood's call to celibacy with this challenging cultural perspective?
A: Before coming to the seminary, I did not understand celibacy. I saw it as just self-denial. Now, I see it very differently. Celibacy for the kingdom of God is a weapon that God gives to the priest. It is a way to give oneself completely to the Lord and to his mission to evangelize.
Q: If you have been on mission (or itinerancy) as part of your formation thus far, share where you went and what you learned from that experience.
A: I spent a year and a half in a parish in east Boston and a year and a half in Sacramento on an Itinerant team. The biggest lesson I learned was that “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few.”
Q: Can you recall a particular moment when you have been called to give testimony to your faith, or more particularly, to your vocation to the priesthood?
A: Many times I was asked to give my faith experience both in Boston and in Sacramento. By meditating on my journey of faith, I see that before I entered into the Neocatechumenal Way, priesthood seemed a heavy burden. I saw the priest as man choosing God, a man sacrificing his life for God—everything based on human strength alone. I considered myself unable to do such sacrifice.
Being in the community—having contact with the word of God, the sacraments, having the grace of seeing God’s power in my life—led me to a new vision of the Church and priesthood. These experiences helped me to see that I have a place in the Church, which is something I was not able to see before. Through the Church, my life, finally, had some meaning. I reached a point where I had two options: to look for meaning in God or to continue looking for it in created things. I believed the meaning I was longing for might be in the Church, as a missionary priest. Then I started to take seriously this vocation.
Q: How do you feel about this significant step, being ordained to the diaconate, in your formation?
A: Ordination to the diaconate is for me, a confirmation of the call that God, in his mercy and providence, had in store for me.
Name: Ryan Cullin Thomas Aquinas O’Neill
Birth date: Dec. 9, 1983
Where born and reared: Fort Collins, Colo.; Loveland, Colo.
Seminary: St. John Vianney Theological Seminary
Q: Describe your educational and professional background before entering formation.
A: I attended Regis University from 2002 until 2005. I studied mathematics and Spanish. I was planning on becoming a high-school teacher. I did not graduate, but left the university to enter the Spirituality Year of St. John Vianney Theological Seminary fall semester 2005. I attended Thompson Valley High School in Loveland and graduated in 2002. I have worked mowing lawns, as a courtesy clerk at an Albertson’s grocery store and I worked for my dad installing laboratory furniture.
Q: What first interested you in the priesthood?
A: I became interested in the priesthood when I was 20. I went to confession with a Dominican priest at a Vigil Praise liturgy, and he asked me if I had ever considered God’s plan for my life. He suggested that I should be open to the priesthood. So, I took his advice. Father Kevin Augustyn was also a role model for me when I was discerning God’s will; he influenced me to consider the diocesan priesthood.
Q: When did you first feel called to the priesthood?
A: I first felt called to the priesthood on Dec. 12, 2004. I had just turned 21. I had been intensely discerning my vocation in prayer over the previous four months but I was feeling frustrated that God would not answer my prayer. After saying my prayers on Dec. 12, as I lay in bed, I had a moment of clarity, in which I experienced a fear and liberation in the depths of my being. It was a profound religious experience in which I was aware of God’s holiness and his invitation for me to become his priest. I don’t remember much else from that night, but I awoke the next morning pretty sure that I was called to be a priest.
Q: What ultimately led you to enter the seminary?
A: Dating a girl, teaching Totus Tuus (“Totally Yours,” a summer catechetical youth program) and my spiritual director. After receiving the call, I got nervous and decided to date a young woman. Looking back, I think it was an immature decision based on my fear of the unknown. However, it was a sign to me that God really respects my freedom and that my call to the priesthood was an undeserved gift.
After I ended that relationship with the young woman and finished my third year of college, I taught Totus Tuus during the summer. I began to understand that the gift of faith is something you never really have unless you give it away. I loved teaching salvation history.
At the end of the summer I talked to my spiritual director, Father Kevin Augustyn, and he asked me if I would apply to the seminary. I was a little surprised, because it was the beginning of August and classes were beginning for me again at Regis University in three weeks. But I thought, If the seminary would consider my application, why not try? So I placed my entire application process into Mary’s hands. I had to do it all in six days because I was going to World Youth Day in Cologne, Germany. And with God’s grace I completed the entire application process in six days!
When I returned from Germany two weeks later I had my final interview at the seminary and later that evening Archbishop Chaput accepted me into the seminary. I began the Spirituality Year at the end of that week.
Q: Where did you find support for your call to the priesthood?
A: I found a lot of support from my peers and friends at Regis University. There was not a lot of encouragement from adults and teachers in my life, but my friends at Regis were on fire for serving Christ and the Church. When I told my parents, my mom floated off the ground out of joy and my dad asked me some questions about dropping out of university. Both of my parents were a little hesitant about me going to seminary at first, simply because they didn’t know what seminary was like. After coming to visit the seminary over the years they have been more and more supportive of me. Coming to the seminary has improved my relationship with my parents. In fact, my relationship with my parents is one of my greatest consolations in life.
Q: What are you most looking forward to about the priesthood?
A: I am looking forward to celebrating Mass daily and listening to confessions. I also have a desire to teach.
Q: What do you find most daunting about the priesthood?
A: I am daunted by the activism and the isolation. I think the temptation for me is to do something productive all the time. And our parishes are so big that there is always something to do no matter how hard a priest works. I also see the other extreme as a temptation for myself—that is to escape from all of the people and my brother priests and to become isolated from others in my own false reality, because of anxiety. Practically speaking, I find preaching a homily a daunting task, because people have such high expectations based on their exposure to the media culture.
Q: What has been your favorite class or aspect of seminary life?
A: My favorite class at the seminary has been the synoptic Gospels with Dr. Tim Gray. My favorite aspect of seminary life is all the scheduled time for prayer.
Q: What is your favorite pastime?
A: My favorite pastimes are running and looking at beautiful artwork.
Q: Is there a particular talent or gift you feel you bring to the seminary community and, eventually, to the Church as a whole?
A: I have been told that I have a lot of enthusiasm toward spreading the Gospel and being excited about Church things. I also tend to have a positive attitude which helps in moments of confrontation and disagreement.
Q: In today’s world, a call to celibacy is seen as radical, if not impossible. How have you reconciled the priesthood’s call to celibacy with this challenging cultural perspective?
A: To start off with, I feel like I fall in love with a woman about every six months, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not called to be a priest. We as humans are sexual beings. All I think, say and do is conditioned by my sexuality. Our society gets that part right: sex is good. But the sexual drive does not completely define who I am. I am a man because of my biology, but I am also called to be a father, just like every man is called to be a father.
However, God has called me to be a spiritual father, which means I surrender my sexual potency to God so that I can receive my manhood, my fatherhood from him. God the Father is the source of all manhood and fatherhood. This fact is very freeing for men who grow up in a “macho” culture that is defined by brute strength, hot babes and fast cars. There is more to life than sex.
I think the real problem is that our culture has forgotten how to be intimate without having sex. Intimacy is me revealing myself to you and you revealing yourself to me. This revealing of self is what one does in prayer with God. That’s how prayer can help me to live as a celibate man.
Q: If you have been on mission (or itinerancy) as part of your formation thus far, share where you went and what you learned from that experience.
A: I spent two months during the summer of 2007 in Peru serving at schools run by the Christian Life Movement. I taught English, physical education and religion at a grade school in Arequipa, and then I worked as an assistant teacher at a school for physically handicapped children in Lima. I also spent a week building a dining hall for a poor neighborhood. I learned that one does not need to own a lot of material possessions to be happy. I learned that social work done without faith spirals into a meaningless and often selfish adventure. I learned that there are severe forms of poverty here in the U.S.A., especially spiritual poverty. I learned how to forgive the Church for her faults.
Q: Can you recall a particular moment when you have been called to give testimony to your faith, or more particularly, to your vocation to the priesthood?
A: I think the main testimony to my faith and particularly to my vocation has been with all of my old friends. I have found it very difficult to continue normal relations with many of my non-Catholic friends from high school and college. Even friends who I was very close to have become estranged because of my decision to give my life completely to Christ as a priest.
I think many of them see me as being too fanatic or unreasonable about my faith. I know some of them respect my decision and strongly disagree with me. This has been a considerable burden on me and I often think of how I could be a better friend to them without compromising my faith. But at least I try to let God speak to them through my perseverance in my vocation, and my connection, weak as it may be, to their lives.
Q: How do you feel about this significant step, being ordained to the diaconate, in your formation?
A: I feel excited about being ordained a deacon. I have some nervousness about carrying out my liturgical functions, mostly because I’ve never done it before and I need some practice. I feel confident that Jesus is going to help me be faithful to him and the Church. The diaconate ordination is the beginning of my last year in the seminary.
During the last year I will be working on a theological thesis paper. I am looking forward to writing and integrating all that I have learned in theology over the past three years. I will also be assigned to a new parish for this last year in the seminary, and I am excited to see where the Lord sends me!
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