Father Dan was born in 1947, the second of five siblings in Killarney Southwest Ireland. After high school, he went to seminary in Rome, Italy, attending the University of the Lateran while staying at Irish College. Upon completion of the six-year seminary course, he was ordained to priesthood at the Cathedral in his hometown, Killarney, on July 4th, 1971. That October, he arrived in Sacramento and was assigned Associate Pastor at All Hallows Church. After two years, he was assigned to St. Vincent Parish in Vallejo from 1973-78 and then to St. Anthony Parish in Sacramento from 1978-1983. Bishop Francis A. Quinn then appointed him to study at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, 1983-1987, graduating with the Pontifical Degree-Licentiate in Sacred Scripture.

On returning in the spring of 1987, he was appointed Associate Director of Continuing Education and asked to direct the RENEW process for the Diocese of Sacramento and was assigned as Pastor of St. Anne Parish, an inner-city multi-ethnic parish in South Sacramento from 1991-1994. He was Pastor of St. James Parish in Davis from 1994-2007 and appointed Pastor of St. Joseph Parish in Vacaville in 2007.

With a group of friends, Fr. Jacobo Caceres had gone to the basilica in his hometown of Tegucigalpa, Honduras to pray the rosary with Mother Teresa, who was traveling though Central and South America. Most of the people with Caceres were not believers, he said, but they all went to see Mother Teresa because she was so respected and loved.

In the receiving line, he recalled, a mother with a baby in her arms tried to give a rose to Mother Teresa, but the baby didn’t want to let it go. The incident was very funny, he said, with everyone laughing, and after Mother Teresa let the baby keep the flower, she turned to Caceres, clasping his hand and looking into his eyes. The experience lasted only for a moment, he said, but it changed his life.

About a month later, Caceres remembers, he read an interview with Mother Teresa in which she said, “When I meet someone, I look into his or her eyes, because that person for me is Jesus.”

Mother Teresa’s description of what she saw when she looked into people’s eyes — when she looked into Caceres’s eyes, in fact — affected him deeply. He began to wonder about looking at the world as Jesus did, and loving the world as Jesus did.

While studying with the varied orders at the Pontifical University, Caceras realized that he had a vocation to be a diocesan priest rather than a religious priest. Caceres went on to two years of study at St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, but his home base was Holy Spirit Parish during the summers and after completing his studies. He was ordained a transitional deacon this past May. “The people here at Holy Spirit have been a big help to me,” he said, helping him with English pronunciation of words before his readings at Mass and generally encouraging and welcoming him.