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Father Brian Costello, pastor of Our Lady of Loretto Church, is pictured in front of the Guadalupe shrine in the courtyard of the Novato parish March, 11, 2020. One month earlier he was diagnosed with Stage 4 liver cancer. (Photo by Christina Gray/Catholic San Francisco)
March 20, 2020
Christina Gray
Catholic San FranciscoOne month to the day after he was diagnosed with Stage 4 liver cancer, the longtime pastor of Our Lady of Loretto Parish told Catholic San Francisco that he doesn’t plan to take medical retirement or to spend time completing a so-called “bucket list.”
“I chose to come back to work because I want to model a happy death for my parishioners,” said Father Brian Costello in an at-times emotional interview March 11 at the Novato parish.
The meeting came six days before Marin County residents were ordered March 17 along with other Bay Area counties to shelter-in-place to reduce the spread of the coronavirus.
Father Costello, 66, broke the news with uncommon candor and grace to his parish community of five years in the Feb. 23 parish bulletin.
In a page-long letter that shared the very human details of being diagnosed out of the blue with an incurable illness, he told parishioners and staff that he was “totally at peace” with what seemed to be God’s plan for him. “Isn’t that what our faith teaches us?” he wrote.
After a short stay at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco immediately after his diagnosis, Father Costello returned to Marin with his mind made up to carry on with his work as pastor.
“I have decided to come back home to OLL and spend my remaining days, weeks or months to be with you until I can’t physically work anymore,” the bulletin letter said.
Father Costello agreed to meet with the paper about that decision.
“All I’ve ever wanted to be is a simple parish priest,” Father Costello said in a choked-up whisper.
His self-described “teacher’s voice," he admitted, has weakened somewhat from the fatigue of his illness – and wavered, no doubt, in part from talking out loud with a near-stranger about his remaining pastoral ambitions.
In short, he wants to continue to lead the parish as it “becomes the parish I know it can be” through a “spiritual revival” program that was in the works before his diagnosis.
More profoundly, he wants to turn his experience facing death into a teaching moment for his parishioners.
“If the Lord meant this for me, to be a good example to my parishioners about what a happy death can be, so be it,” he said. “This is where the rubber meets the road.”
He said God has given him “a great gift” to have an opportunity to show that death is not to be feared when you have faith.
“I believe with every fiber of my body in the resurrection,” he said. “To have this happen right before Lent, well, it couldn’t have happened at a better time.”
When Presentation Sister Mary Jane Francis asked her first-graders at St. Elizabeth School in San Francisco what they wanted to be when they grew up, young Brian Costello had a ready answer.
He entered the now-closed St. Joseph Seminary in Mountain View right out of eighth grade but left in his second year to earn English and history degrees so he could become a teacher.
In 1983 he joined the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, a religious community in Southern California with a teaching charism. He taught high school for much of his time there as a brother. In 1997 his desire to be a priest drew him back to the Bay Area and to St. Patrick’s Seminary & University where he completed his seminary education and was ordained a priest in the year 2000.Father Costello taught at Marin Catholic High School under then-president and now Spokane, Washington, Bishop Tom Daly. His first assignment as a parish priest was at St. Anthony of Padua in Novato. He was pastor of Mater Dolorosa Parish in South San Francisco and also served Most Holy Redeemer Parish in San Francisco before his assignment to Our Lady of Loretto in 2014.
“Even though I’ve had some bad days as a priest along with the good ones, I wouldn’t change being a priest for anything in the world,” he said. “It’s a great life and I just wish more people would listen to the call.”
Father Costello admitted there are mornings when he is hurting and suffering, both physically and emotionally.
“But I offer it up to Jesus who suffered and died on the cross for us,” he said. “We are not a Good Friday people. We are an Easter Sunday people.”
Last month almost simultaneously with its pastor’s life-altering diagnosis, the parish received the results of a comprehensive parish life survey designed and executed last fall by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
“We definitely got our money’s worth,” he said of the 153-page bound report that will help inform the parish as it begins in coming months the implementation of a parish “spiritual revival.” The initiative is based on the book, “Rebuilt: Awakening the Faithful, Reaching the Lost and Making Church Matter” (Ave Maria Press, 2013).
Written by Father Michael White of Church of the Nativity in Maryland, and a lay associate, Tom Corcoran, the book tells the story of how they brought their parish back to life, tripled weekend Mass attendance, increased giving and cultivated flourishing ministries.
Father Costello said Our Lady of Loretto has also been physically renovating the church with new paint, music and sound systems and flooring, as well as a new website.
Physical renovations are “a piece of cake though,” he said. “Spiritual renovation is much more difficult.”
What the parish is experiencing is what “90% of parishes are going through,” said Father Costello. "We’ve become an old church, there is nothing wrong with that but as the old die we don’t have the young people to take their place.”
As he begins the treatment in April that doctors tell him will prolong but not save his life, he is surrounded and supported by “the people I love and the people who love me.”
His kid sister Sally travels with him for all his doctor’s appointments. And after a period of estrangement from brothers Barry and Bruce, he says they speak almost every day now.
“When you’re facing death and about to meet your maker, you find out what’s really important in life,” Father Costello said. “Fortunately I knew that before.”
Tears flowed freely as he talked about his loyal parish staff, whose voices could be overheard coming from various rooms in a rectory that looks and feels like a family home. The staff includes parish manager Patrick Reeder and parish secretary Erin Troy, who, Father Costello admitted, “basically run the parish.”
“We don’t have a bench in the priesthood,” Father Costello said, using a sports analogy, because there are no extra players.
“If I can do my little bit helping the archdiocese,” he said, “it’s better therapy than chemo.”