A Hub native born on May 19, 1949, and raised in the Jamaica Plain section of the city, he was one of the three sons (Albert is the oldest, the two other sons are Robert and Thomas); and two daughters (Margaret and Mary Benson) of the late Albert and Elizabeth (Leahy) Faretra.

He was raised in the Blessed Sacrament Parish, and attended the parish school, staffed by the Sisters of Charity of Convent Station, N.J. He then went to nearby St. Mary of the Assumption High School in Brookline, meeting there Boston's Sisters of St. Joseph.

On high school graduation in 1967, he entered the United States Navy and served on active duty for two years and in the Naval Reserves for four more. From 1969 to 1971, he was both a letter carrier and a custodian in Newton and returned to Jamaica Plain, to Our Lady of Lourdes Parish, where the then-pastor, the late Father Harold Johnson, hired him as an administrative assistant.

During seven years, he saw up close the life of a parish and its needs and how those might need to change as the demographics and populations shifted. The once solidly Irish parish was now seeing an increasing number of Spanish speaking from several Central and South American nations.

With the inspiration of his own uncle, Father Charles Leahy, and the experience at Our Lady of Lourdes, he thought he might pursue a vocation to the priesthood. Thus, in the fall of 1988, at the age of 29, he found himself in Brighton as a seminary college freshman.

Over the next eight years, he would complete both the college and theology seminary preparation at St. John, Brighton, campus.

On June 7, 1988, Bernard Cardinal Law ordained him and his classmates at Holy Cross Cathedral.

In the years since ordination, he has served in assignments almost exclusively south of his native Boston. Only one has been due west.

His first assignment was to the small parish of St. Martha, Plainville; there probably could not have been greater contrast between it and his home parish, whether in the size of population, or the spacious church and a rectory for five or six priests and a school for hundreds of students and a convent for a score or two of sisters. He enjoyed Plainville, remaining a year longer than usual for a first assignment at the time.

In 1992, he was chaplain at Brockton's Cardinal Spellman High School and lived in residence at Holy Ghost Rectory, Whitman. Not sure if he picked it intentionally, but he lived in the home parish of Francis Cardinal Spellman, for whom the next-door Brockton school was named.

In 1994, he moved east to Hingham, serving as a parochial vicar at St. Paul Parish.

In 2001, he was at that due west assignment, appointed by Cardinal Law as pastor of Belmont's mother parish, St. Joseph.

A decade later, Cardinal O'Malley named him pastor at St. Blaise, Bellingham, placing him in that corner of the archdiocese, where he first served 25 years prior.

This last assignment would also be the longest single assignment of his active priestly ministry, 15 years, concluding on Oct. 11, 2026, when he joins the ranks of senior priests.