From beat cop to a man of the cloth
TCU policeman John Pacheco leaves force to become a priest in the Diocese of Fort Worth.
by Kathy Hamer | TCU Yearbook
John Pacheco, a TCU policeman for 21 years turned Catholic priest, says his career still follows his passion - "helping people."
John Pacheco wore purple for 21 years, but not as a liturgical color. The purple was a badge on his sleeve, the formal insignia of Texas Christian University. He was a TCU cop.
But now, whenever Pacheco wears purple, it will be on the chasuble of a Catholic priest. The newest priest in the Diocese of Fort Worth was ordained in May at St. Patrick Cathedral.
“I stumbled into law enforcement,” said Pacheco, who started out as a communications major at the University of Texas at Arlington. He worked as a public safety officer at Tarrant County Junior College, then attended the North Texas Regional Police Academy, spent a year with the Fort Worth police, and ended up as day sergeant in the TCU force.
The job was supposed to have been temporary. "But I fell in love with TCU, and stayed there,” he said.
At Pacheco’s diaconate ordination last fall, Bishop Kevin Vann called to mind his metamorphosis, saying, “John, in your past life as a law enforcement officer you wore a uniform, and now you are exchanging one uniform for another.”
But Pacheco’s policeman-to-priest transition was a less drastic leap than it might have seemed, because his priority was always “helping people.”
“Kids at TCU are good kids. They come to get an education and have fun, but as campus police, you have to watch people from off campus, too.
“Once I got a call about an assault that occurred just off campus, and the Fort Worth Police had called and advised us that the man was heading towards campus and they believed he was armed with a gun. He had crawled into the bushes to hide, and I found him, he started to roll out, and I had to pull my gun for protection.
“Thanks be to God he didn’t have anything in his hand, but it was a scary feeling. I remember pulling my gun and holding it,” Pacheco said, “but I didn’t raise it.”
During his two-plus decades in TCU law enforcement, the police department changed and flourished under the direction of a new chief, and Pacheco had served on the search committee that selected him.
“Walking away from TCU, I sensed I had helped make it a better police department,” Pacheco said. “And I enjoyed myself there all the time.
”The kids would come to the university as freshmen and sort of intimidated,” he said, “then four years later you’d see how much they had matured. I have a soft spot in my heart for TCU.”
Pacheco’s priestly vocation, from the first hint at age four to the seminary 49 years later, was book-ended by his mother, who he said, “knew me thoroughly.” To begin, he remembers traveling to Mexico City with his parents Adam and Mary, his older brother Adam Jr., and his grandparents, and holding his mother’s hand at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
“My mother had a ‘death grip’ on my hand,” he said, laughing, “as we watched all the people walking on their knees to where Mary had appeared to Juan Diego. I asked my mother what they were doing, and she said, ‘They are showing our Blessed Mother how much they love her.’”
Five years later, when 9-year-old John was with his mother and brother in the chapel at Immaculate Heart of Mary, “I thought, for just a few seconds, I could see myself as a priest. It scared me at first.”
His reverence came back periodically through life. In college, he read all he could find of Our Lady of Lourdes, and Fatima, and for the first time expressed his feelings to his mother. Her reaction was simple, said Pacheco: “I don’t want you to be a priest.”
“Later in life she said, ‘I should not have told you that. I was being selfish. I only have two sons, and I hoped you would get married, but I should not have said that.’”
“My mother was a big influence on my life,” Pacheco said. “We were very, very close to one another. And I loved my dad. To me he was a cross between John Wayne, Gary Cooper and Superman. When he came in the room, I knew everything would be okay, because he was there. Even when he was dying I felt that way.”
John’s father, who had Alzheimer’s disease, died of cancer in 1998. His mother died of Alzheimer’s in 2007.
“We had a real good talk a few days before she died,” Pacheco said. “She was very proud that I was in the seminary, and that I had decided to do ‘what the good Lord had called me to do.’ She said she wasn’t going to live much longer, but that she would be with me.”
Pacheco had applied twice for admission to the seminary for the Diocese of Fort Worth, but was not accepted the first time.
He said he “let it go, and took a trip to Israel, Capernaum and the Sea of Galilee. We had mass where Jesus spoke the Sermon on the Mount, and I just adored it there. I felt I needed to be there. I didn’t want to leave, and yet I wanted to return to care for my mom.”
At home, Father Ahn Tran and Sister Donna Fergusen asked John if he was still interested in the seminary, and, “I knew God was calling me. I took the test again – I knew I was going to the seminary, and I did!”
John’s brother Adam and his wife Mary took their mother into their home, encouraging their younger brother to leave for the seminary and, “Thanks be to God for my brother and sister-in-law. Had I not been confident they could look after my mom, I wouldn’t be here.”
“Once I stepped into the seminary I had no doubts at all. I told my spiritual director, ‘I want to be a priest and get out there.' He answered, ‘Your priesthood starts now, in the seminary. God wants you here now. When you are ordained, that’s where God will want you.’ ”
“I am really looking forward to my life as a priest,” Pacheco said. “We all feel apprehension and confusion when we start here, but God asks us to try. This is what God called me to do. I know it. Being a priest. Serving the body of Christ.
“The moment I stand before God,” he said, “a split second before I die – I want to know that I tried. That I did the best I could.”
John Pacheco’s parents shared with him their devotion to our Lady of Guadalupe, where he first saw pilgrims demonstrating their faith. “When I got to the seminary, there was a picture of the tilma, with the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and I prayed that if she helped me, I would make a pilgrimage back there to were it all started.”
For his ordination day, Pacheco asked the bishop’s permission to wear a gold chasuble with the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe on the front.
“And at my first mass,” he said, “I will be looking up and saying, ‘Mom, Dad, I’m here. I’m doing it.’”