St. John Paul II Catholic Church, Ponte Vedra | Nocatee, FL
COMMITMENT TO NE USING NEW PLATFORMS TO BRING CHRIST TO THE WORLD
a v e m a r i a m a g a z i n e | s u m m e r 2020
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ev. Richard Pagano (AMU ’08) flashed a good-natured smile from across the computer screen. Sunshine streamed in through his office windows as he finished off the last few pieces of an orange. Now, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Zoom meetings are the all-toocommon meeting platform with those outside the home. However, back then, it was simply the most expedient way to interview Pagano. Pagano is the pastor at St. John Paul the Second parish in Ponte Vedra, FL. As a diocesan priest, Pagano compared his role in the church to being a soldier in the trenches. “You have one foot in the world and so you’ve got to be present to the world in all of its filth, worldliness, and as it’s directed by the passions and the flesh. You’ve got to
be present there for people.” Referring to the fact that Tom Monaghan, the founder of Ave Maria University, is a proud Marine, Pagano shared how he appreciates being a Gyrene and part of the Ave Maria University family. As a priest, “You’ve got to be like a marine, you’re a trench-man, you’re on the frontlines.” In addition to his pastoral ministries, Pagano co-hosts the number one Catholic podcast in the country, The Catholic Talk Show, covering a broad range of topics from whether it’s time for Vatican III, to the ranking and sampling of Trappist Beers. For Pagano, media is an extension of his ministerial work of bringing God into the world. According to Pagano, the church’s channels for outreach have changed dramatically. “The church used to build beautiful cathedrals and churches in the public square, utilizing the attractiveness of tapestry, fresco, stained glass, and a rousing preacher to engage and evangelize travelers passing through the square. Now, due to the digital structure, traffic is no longer guided to the physical square. Instead, people are guided to the digital squares of social media, podcast forums, YouTube, and other streaming platforms.” Pagano continued, “What the church needs to do is to find itself in these different formats and forums open to the wider public. We need
to begin the discussion in the marketplace of ideas now being driven online, striving to present the idea of God incarnate, the person of Jesus Christ.” The conviction with which Pagano spoke of evangelization overflows from his own encounter with Christ during his freshman year of college. As Pagano described it, his life pre-conversion was a product of MTV and the rap culture. After blowing out his left knee in high school, Pagano’s college coach at Bergen Community College told him he needed to get knee surgery if he wanted to take his college basketball career seriously. A month after his surgery, Pagano recalled being in a dark mental place and walking down to the basketball courts in a full hip-to-ankle leg brace. After being enticed into joining a game of full-court basketball, he blew out his other knee and had to go straight back to the same orthopedic for a second surgery. “It was the felix culpa of my life, the fortunate fall as Saint Augustine says. I started looking at the door closing on my basketball hopes and aspirations, all of that just fell apart. It opened me up to a desperate prayer I said from my heart. ‘Jesus, I’m doing everything wrong,’ and I really was. Jesus came to meet me on my recovery bed after my second knee surgery. There was
