Pope Benedict XVI was ‘like a second father’ for St. Malachy parish pastor

Pope Benedict XVI greets then deacon candidates Sean Danda, center, from St. Malachy Parish in Brownsburg, Nicholas Vaskov, left, of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, and Jesse Burish, right, of the Diocese of LaCrosse, Wis., in St. Peter’s Square in Rome in 2008. The seminarians received priestly formation at the Pontifical North American College in Rome. (Submitted photo/L’Osservatore Romano)

By Sean Gallagher

As a college seminarian in the spring of 2005 at the time of the death of St. John Paul II, Father Sean Danda knew little about then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

But watching Cardinal Ratzinger celebrate the funeral of

St. John Paul II left a “deep impression” on him, noted the pastor of St. Malachy Parish in Brownsburg in a recent interview with The Criterion.

“I could tell that he loved John Paul,” said Father Danda. “He loved the God John Paul loved, and he loved and believed in the Church John Paul had shepherded up to that point.

“I thought to myself: ‘This is the kind of priest I want to be.’ ” (Related story: Archdiocesan priests shaped by writings and examples of Pope Benedict)

Cardinal Ratzinger was soon elected to succeed St. John Paul II as bishop of Rome and took the name Benedict XVI. Father Danda arrived in Rome two months later for the last four years of his priestly formation.

The day after he arrived, he attended a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican celebrated by Pope Benedict. Although Father Danda didn’t yet know Italian, the language in which the Mass was celebrated, the new pontiff continued to affect him.

“I recognized the noble humility with which he carefully celebrated the Mass,” said Father Danda. “And when he spoke his homily, it was with confidence and authority. He embodied both the Lamb of God and the Lion of Judah. Although I didn’t understand his words, I understood [something greater]. Pope Benedict’s actions were always as clear as his words—he made himself available to God and God’s word.”

As Father Danda studied Pope Benedict’s writings in seminary, his attraction to him grew.

Although he saw the pontiff as an intellectual, he also recognized that “his words came not only from a gifted mind, but also from deep reflection and pondering all things in his heart like the way St. Luke described Mary ‘pondering all these things in her heart’ ” (Lk 2:19).

“He wrote about who God is,” Father Danda said. “He was simple, direct and clear, and gave great images that played upon the imagination.

“He wrote and spoke like a father who sits down with his son to teach him the most important profound truths and mysteries of the universe. It is no wonder his first encyclical was ‘Deus Caritas Est’ [‘God Is Love’]. If we miss this image of God, we miss everything.”

Because Father Danda was far from his family in Rome, Pope Benedict became “like a second father” to him. Instead of going to a Christmas Mass with his family back in Indiana, he went to a Christmas Eve Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica celebrated by Pope Benedict.

“The images from his homily consoled me and revealed to me that my home is not anywhere on this Earth,” Father Danda recalled. “I am a citizen of heaven because of who I am and who my Father is.”

He recalled the words of Pope Benedict during a Christmas Eve Mass: “ ‘The Lord said to me: You are my son; this day I have begotten you.’ With these words of the second psalm, the Church begins the Vigil Mass of Christmas. … God is so great that he can become small. God is so powerful that he can make himself vulnerable and come to us as a defenseless child, so that we can love him.”

Two years later, the first volume of Pope Benedict’s three-volume set of books Jesus of Nazareth was released. The books showed Father Danda “how captivated Benedict was with Jesus.”

“He did not just want us to know about Jesus but who Jesus is,” Father Danda said. “It was as if I was reading the desert fathers, St. Augustine or St. Ambrose. He saw things I never noticed before, and I was amazed how he could discover the timeless hidden questions of humanity.”

Seeing him celebrate Mass from afar soon turned into an up-close encounter for Father Danda when he was asked to be an altar server at a papal Mass on Jan. 1, 2008. He was specifically assigned to hold the missal from which Pope Benedict would pray the prayers of the liturgy.

“When I came up the first time, I held the book a little lower than I knew I was supposed to so that I could see his face,” Father Danda recalled. “And he looked me right in the eyes with a fatherly gaze for quite some time.

“But I started to shake because the missal was getting heavy from the awkward way I was holding it. When the master of ceremonies reached over to steady the book to make sure I didn’t drop it, I moved it back up to where I knew it should be.

“Later that October, I met Pope Benedict in person. He was meeting many different people that spoke different languages so we didn’t speak, but he pointed at me as if to say: ‘You were that seminarian who held the missal for me, weren’t you?’ Or, at least, I would like to think that was what he was thinking.”

As he moved toward his ordination in 2009 and returned to Rome for a year of graduate studies, Father Danda experienced new ways that Pope Benedict shaped his priestly life and ministry.

“Pope Benedict was an introvert who followed an extrovert—St. John Paul II,” Father Danda said. “Pope Benedict offered us freedom to be ourselves. He showed that priests ought to be themselves, not someone else, even if we have to step out of our comfort zone at times.

“This was very freeing for many young priests who saw and realized this through him.”

Father Danda also saw meaning in Pope Benedict’s death on Dec. 31, 2022, the memorial of St. Sylvester I, a pope of the fourth century.

“When Cardinal Ratzinger was elected pope, he chose the name Benedict, who was the saint that brought great stability in a turbulent time which led to future growth and expansion for the Church,” he said. “St. Sylvester prior to St. Benedict did the same. He brought great stability in unstable times which set for growth and expansion in the Church.

“I believe that remains Pope Benedict XVI’s legacy to us as well—stability during unstable times which will lead to future growth and expansion in the Church,” Father Danda said. “He planted while others will harvest, but we will all rejoice in the joys of the harvest one day together in the kingdom of heaven.” †

 

See all our coverage of the death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI