Please pray for the soul of Fr. Linus Desantis, OFM, who I recently discovered died during Mass in December. One might say that in my own life I came to repent and take Christ more seriously in three distinct phases of my life. A Confession I made, shaking in the snow of an upstate New York winter, to him was of the first of these. He did not give me a penance, he just told me to "focus on the truth" very plainly. I could not understand him at the time, but I would like to think I do now.
He called me the "Voice" during my one year at Syracuse University because he liked my delivery of the lessons at Mass and he always made time to talk with students about their own lives, never prattling on about himself. Although the Hendricks Chapel staff often recruited him into ecumenical affairs and he was no "Traditionalist", he had a knack for dealing with the absurd. He was once asked to write an ecumenical prayer for the convocation at the beginning of term. They turned down his first draft because it mentioned God explicitly and alluded to Christ. He retorted, "What was I supposed to address? The great gushy feeling in the sky who may or may not exist?"
Rest in peace.
Priests of that caliber are a real treasure. May he find his own treasure in Heaven.
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