Top photo caption: In this screenshot, Father David Swantek gives a homily for a YouTube recording of his private Sunday Mass Aug. 2.
By EmmaLee Italia, Contributing Editor
From his earliest days of discernment through 18 years of priesthood, Father David Swantek has longed to share the Gospel far and wide. That yearning has led him to some unexpected places.
His many ministries, as devoted pastor of St. Martha Parish in Point Pleasant, an annual missionary priest in the Diocese of Fairbanks, Alaska, and through his YouTube Masses viewed by tens of thousands worldwide, have been vehicles for showing people what he most loves about being a Catholic priest.
“Jesus – that’s what I love most, the closeness … you always kind of feel his presence,” said Father Swantek. “I love giving his message to his people, proclaiming and preaching the Gospel.”
Uniquely Called
Courtesy photo
Father Swantek has spent a month during each of the last 17 summers in Skagway, Alaska, substituting for the resident priest. His fascination for Alaska started in boyhood, watching his parents support The Alaskan Shepherd missionary priests, who traveled by dogsled to logging camps in Fairbanks.
“I always thought they were so cool,” he said.
Then there was St. Thérèse. Before serious discernment, he checked out St. Thérèse of Lisieux’s autobiography, “Story of a Soul,” from the library.
“Don’t read ‘Story of a Soul’ if you don’t want it to change your life,” he said, adding that he subsequently broke up with his girlfriend and began discerning the priesthood in earnest. “That book made me become a priest.”
After working up the courage to call a vocations director, Father Swantek said, “I had the Diocese of Trenton [application] in one hand and the Diocese of Fairbanks in the other.”
Ultimately the Lord called him to serve the people of Trenton – but Alaska stayed in the picture.
To the Frontier
Following his 2008 ordination, Father Swantek was assigned to St. Mary Parish, Middletown, where he noticed parish priests taking their monthlong vacation in Ireland and the Philippines. It sparked an idea.
“I decided I wanted to go to Alaska with my vacation time,” Father Swantek said. A cross-country airliner, ferry ride, puddle-jumper flight and hitchhike later, he found himself on the doorstep of Thérèse Church, Skagway – which he saw as “100 percent the Lord’s will.”
Just 17 souls belong to the mission church of St. Thérèse, which shares a pastor with Sacred Heart Parish in Haines. “We had Mass for the cruise ship people in the morning, then another Mass at night; if I didn’t see you for one, I’d knock on your door for the other!” he joked.
“It was like a retreat for me,” he said. “I got to know the locals, live on the frontier, see the Northern Lights.”
Special Connections
Closer to home while reaching into living rooms across the world is Father Swantek’s YouTube channel – a COVID-19-era project that continues to this day.
“It started on St. Patrick’s Day, after the pandemic closed everything down,” he said. He worried about parishioners blocked from communal worship.
Armed with little more than a tablet, microphone and makeshift setup in a small chapel, he began recording Masses for YouTube. Sometimes his black Labrador, Cragley, wandered into view.
“We found that people who were isolated found a bit of a community in the comments section,” Father Swantek said. “People really liked it.”
They kept showing up and spreading the word – leading to 60,000+ current subscribers and a weekly viewing of some 30,000, from Australia, Sudan, Canada, Ireland and beyond.
Viewers have also journeyed to St. Martha’s “like a mini pilgrimage,” Father Swantek said. “When they saw no one during the pandemic, alone in their houses, we were in their living rooms,” he said. “It let them know God was with them.”
The online ministry has never been about building a personal following.
“We want followers for Christ,” he said. “I always talk about the need to go to Communion and receive Jesus.”
Parish Proud
Those same priorities shape Father Swantek’s ministry at St. Martha Parish, where he first served as a seminarian and now pastors a community he describes as energetic, welcoming and eager to serve.
“I love it,” he said. “This is a ‘roll-up-your-sleeves, what can we do?’ parish.”
He touted outreach successes of the Knights of Columbus, the parish’s “Pizza on Earth” program and the Widows and Widowers ministry, among others.
“The life of constant interruption is a tough thing – it’s tough on parents, and it’s tough on priests, too,” Father Swantek said, expressing gratitude to Bishop David M. O’Connell, C.M., for providing spirituality days for his priests. “He’s really good about inviting us to eat and spend time with him; we really need that.”
As for leading his flock, “I’m working for Christ – he’s the head shepherd,” Father Swantek said. “I’ll say, ‘Lord, they’re your people – you need to help them.’ And he gives me the energy to carry on.”