FORTY-five-year-old deacon Joseph Morley is to become the first Bermuda-born Catholic priest since the island became a Diocese in 1967.

He will be ordained on Wednesday, December 8, "on the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the 150th anniversary of the proclamation of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception", according to a Diocese press release.

The celebration will take place in the Cathedral of St. Theresa at 7.30 p.m. and will mark the "first native to be ordained to the priesthood" of the Bermuda Diocese.

After attending Mount St. Agnes Academy, Deacon Morley ? to be known in future as Father Joe ? earned a BA in religious studies at St. Leo College in Florida in 1983. He received a master's of Divinity degree from the Toronto School of Theology in 1989.

He was ordained to the Deaconate in 2000, and served as Diocesan Director of Religious Education for a year, before being assigned to a poor, inner-city Boston parish for 18 months. His immediate family live on East Broadway.