Get to Know Our Four New Priests!
- Denver Catholic Staff
- 37 minutes ago
- 10 min read
Fathers Manuel Alarcon, Jason DiRito, Jonathan Francois and Daniel Rivas look forward to bringing God's mercy and presence to Catholics across Northern Colorado.
On Saturday, May 9, Archbishop James Golka ordained four men to the priesthood at the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Denver. Between these four new priests and record-high numbers of souls entering the Catholic Church this Easter, the local church has much to celebrate!
We asked our newest priests about their vocation journeys and what they're most looking forward to. Read their responses and get to know them better!
Father Manuel Alarcon
Hometown: Albatera, Alicante, Spain
Home Parish: St. John the Baptist, Johnstown
Editor's Note: 2025 Q&A answers are included below.
What are you most looking forward to about being a priest?
I am most looking forward to serving the people of God in the particular church I will be assigned to and to serve the universal Church, especially celebrating the Most Holy Eucharist and helping people through my ministry and Confession.
Tell us about one person - clergy or lay - who inspired you to follow the Lord more closely.
I participate in the Neocatechumenal Way in a particular community both here in Denver and back at home. I was inspired very much by a priest who participates in the Neocatechumenal Way in the same community as my parents back in Spain. He really was an inspiration for me, seeing a happy priest who enjoyed his vocation.
What would you say to someone beginning to follow the Lord and his plan for their lives?
Do not be afraid! The Lord has a beautiful plan prepared for you. God is your Father. He loves you immensely, and he has prepared for you a plan that you do not expect and it is full of beautiful surprises.
How has the Lord called you into greater hope as you have followed him towards your vocation?
The Lord called me during the World Youth Day in Madrid in 2011. I was going through a difficult period in my life in which I did not want to be in the Church and wanted to follow the way of the world. At the time, I was studying art at a school, but I did not know what I wanted for my life, much less what the Lord wanted for me. I went to WYD really asking the Lord for an answer and I found myself so happy all throughout a pilgrimage which my parish organized. At the time, I liked a girl who was in my parish and had also come to that pilgrimage. However, the Lord made me feel so happy that I really saw the need to make a radical change in my life. So, I went to a vocational center where I discerned God's will for a while. Then, eventually, I joined the Redemptoris Mater Missionary Seminary in Denver. The Lord has shown me his love for me more deeply all these years in the seminary.
Father Jason DiRito
Hometown: Arvada, CO
Home Parish: Shrine of St. Anne Parish, Arvada
You’ll soon be in a parish full-time, baptizing, preaching, hearing Confessions and celebrating the Eucharist. What strikes you most about those responsibilities as you approach ordination?
As I prepare to take on the responsibilities of a parish priest, I'm confronted with the reality of how far beyond my natural capacities they are. That said, I can't wait to witness the mighty works of God in the lives of his people. As his minister, I will get a front row seat to his loving work in souls through the sacraments.
There seems to be a surge in interest in the Catholic Church right now. In your experience so far, what have you learned from walking with people (children, parents or catechumens) interested in or preparing to become Catholic, especially through Baptism?
Baptism is a family affair. Many people approach the Church and seek Baptism because of their relationships with Catholic family or friends, and of course, it makes us members of God's covenant family. I have loved getting to encourage parents who bring their children to be baptized. The dignity of their mission as parents is proportionate to the dignity of the child God has entrusted the gift of his grace to.
How do you see the connection between Baptism and your own call to the priesthood?
When I was ordained a deacon the day before my baptismal anniversary last year, it struck me that my vocation and all the graces I've received have their origin in my Baptism. I love to pray in thanksgiving at the baptismal font in my home parish because there I received my identity as an adopted son of the Father. My vocation and the mission that I've received all flow from there.
When you meet someone who doesn’t think their Baptism matters anymore, what would you want to say to them?
To someone who doesn't see the value of their Baptism, I would emphasize that their Baptism is a sign of God's fidelity to them. It is an open door to turn back to Christ and his Church, and gives them a more stable identity through relationship with God than anything in the world can offer.
To their family, I would encourage them to continue praying for the same reason. God has a way in, and he is committed to bringing the work he began in them to fulfillment.
Father Jonathan Francois
Hometown: Cedar Rapids, IA
Home Parish: St. Gianna Beretta Molla Parish, Denver
You’ll soon be in a parish full-time, baptizing, preaching, hearing Confessions and celebrating the Eucharist. What strikes you most about those responsibilities as you approach ordination?
In preparing to celebrate Mass these last few months, what has struck me so poignantly is the sacrificial aspect of the Mass. Priests in the Old Testament offered sacrifice to God in the temple through the blood of goats and bulls. In the New Covenant, the priest offers bread and wine to be transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ for the salvation of souls.
When I am practicing praying the Roman Canon [a list of ancient martyrs prayed during the Eucharistic Prayer at Mass], I have been inserting the names of my deceased ancestors when we pray for the faithful departed. When I do this, I remember that the Mass applies grace to the whole Church, even those who have died and may be in Purgatory. To be the first priest in my family and to offer Christ to the Father on behalf of my family and the whole Church is extraordinary, especially when I consider how my family has prayed for a priest to receive a vocation from Christ for generations.
These sacramental responsibilities are a source of excitement for me, especially the thought that Christ will operate through me in these liturgies as in persona Christi [in the person of Christ]. I am an unworthy minister, but given extraordinary grace to operate as Jesus on earth during our pilgrimage towards Heaven as we participate in the sacraments that he has given to the Church.
There seems to be a surge in interest in the Catholic Church right now. In your experience so far, what have you learned from walking with people (children, parents or catechumens) interested in or preparing to become Catholic, especially through Baptism?
Father Romano Guardini, a German priest in the early 1900s, once said, “An event of enormous importance is taking place: the Church is awakening within souls.”
I think that this statement is true today, as we see the Catholic Church receiving more attention in recent days. What I think is awakening in souls is a transformation of our understanding of Christianity. Christianity isn’t simply a religious or moral code. People are beginning to understand that being incorporated into the Church is a way of transcendence and a way of living life abundantly.
What I have found in walking with people in their preparation to become Catholic is that they want to encounter Christ as living and still operative in our world. This is also true of the Church. Father Guardini says this well when he says, “The Church is not an institution devised and built by men … but a living reality. … It lives still throughout the course of time. Like all living realities, it develops, it changes … and yet in the very depths of its being it remains the same; its inmost nucleus is Christ. To the extent that we look upon the church as an organization, like an association, we have not yet arrived at a proper understanding of it. Instead, it is a living reality and our relationship with it ought to be — life.”
When we relate to Christ personally, in a way that permeates our entire lives, we come into contact with life (especially in our life of prayer and moral life). Extending this life to modern man is the greatest work of mercy we can undertake. Modern man will never find the Church compelling if we advertise ourselves as another “subscription service.” Rather, the Church is awakening within souls because modern man is hungering for an encounter with Christ, and no longer wants to fall for false imitations of a true and vital Christianity that has perdured through generations.
How do you see the connection between Baptism and your own call to the priesthood?
God has relentlessly pursued me my whole life. Through our Baptism, God has stamped his Christic seal on our foreheads through the Chrism [holy oil] that we receive. In being ordained a priest, I will again be anointed with this oil, with my hands being smeared with Chrism so that I can administer the sacraments and hold the Body and Blood of the Savior.
In undertaking the ministry of priest, I am reminded of the depiction of Christ in Isaiah 63: “I have trodden the winepress alone; from the nations no one was with me. … I looked, but there was no helper; I stared, but there was no one to sustain me. … He said, ‘Surely they are my people, children who will be true to me.’”
In priesthood, I desire to be a companion of Christ who will trod the winepress with him as his friend. Accompanying Christ in this salvific work as a friend of the Bridegroom gives new life and fire to my life as a co-worker in his vineyard.
When you meet someone who doesn’t think their Baptism matters anymore, what would you want to say to them?
When leading Baptism classes for first-time parents this past year, I would ask them, “How does it feel to be responsible for this new life you have brought into this world?”
I would typically get courageous, but mixed responses from my couples. Why? Because they realize their newfound motherhood and fatherhood are insufficient to meet the present and future needs of their newborn child.
In light of this, I would often ask my couples to pray with the story of Abraham and Isaac as well as the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. I ask them to do this because I believe they will be better disposed to allow God the Father to co-parent their child with them as they present their child for Baptism.
In these narratives of Scripture, we see that God the Father is, by essence, more capable of being a father than any of us. What first-time parents need most is for the priest/deacon to provide the opportunity for God to be their child’s Father alongside them. No couple can provide the perfect formation and education for their children. God the Father has a plan more perfect than any one of us. In surrendering their need for control and allowing the space for God the Father to enter into their need, the parents can make a gift of their child to God the Father in Baptism.
What I have found is that this proposal really resonates with people (especially the fathers). In speaking about Baptism in this way, God’s fatherhood becomes a necessity for the Christian. It is through Baptism that God makes us his sons and daughters, and his heirs of glory. Baptism is the sacrament of the Church that gives us a new direction and destination in God. In retrieving our Baptismal origins as Christians, we recover the dynamism of God’s fatherhood, so needed in our transient, frenetic culture.
Father Daniel Rivas
Hometown: Denver, CO
Home Parish: Ascension Parish, Denver
You’ll soon be in a parish full-time, baptizing, preaching, hearing Confessions and celebrating the Eucharist. What strikes you most about those responsibilities as you approach ordination?
What moves me the most about priestly ministry is the privilege of walking with people in some of the most crucial moments of their lives. For example, the marriage of a young couple, the baptism of their first child, the death of a loved one or the return to Confession after many years are life-defining moments.
In those times, God generously grants priests the honor of making his presence known, felt and appreciated, and we pray to do that faithfully and humbly.
There seems to be a surge in interest in the Catholic Church right now. In your experience so far, what have you learned from walking with people (children, parents or catechumens) interested in or preparing to become Catholic, especially through Baptism?
People who are interested in becoming Catholic most often have an open mind, and when the Truth is presented to them in its beauty and clarity, they embrace it freely and joyfully. This is a constant reminder to me of the gift of faith given to me from a young age, and of the need to see God as St. Augustine did: “O Beauty, ever ancient, ever new.”
How do you see the connection between Baptism and your own call to the priesthood?
The day of my Baptism was the day I was taken from sin and rededicated to God the Father as his beloved son in Jesus Christ. My call to the priesthood is simply the fulfillment of that renunciation and dedication, not only as his son, but also his companion and intimate friend.
These lifelong commitments have given my life new meaning, that I who live might live no longer for myself but for him who for my sake died and was raised.
When you meet someone who doesn’t think their Baptism matters anymore, what would you want to say to them?
I would ask them if it matters to belong to someone, for example, to their family, their spouse or a community that loves them.
The truth is, we all want to belong, but sometimes we get caught up in belonging to or defining ourselves by the wrong thing, whether it’s the world or our selfish desires.
The Good News of the Gospel is that we do belong to someone, a community of love that is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and to Jesus Christ, who, for freedom has died and set us free.
