The deacon who announces the Good News—and sports scores

The deacon who announces the Good News—and sports scores October 25, 2015

DeaconBorneandWife

From The National Catholic Register: 

Dan Borné is a deacon at St. Jean Vianney parish in the Diocese of Baton Rouge, La. He is one of a growing number of deacons serving the Church. He is also the public-address announcer for Louisiana State University’s football and basketball games and president of the Louisiana Chemical Association, which represents 66 chemical-manufacturing companies in the Bayou State. He recently spoke with Register correspondent Kelly King Alexander about his love of the diaconate and witnessing to Christ in all areas of his life. He will be behind the microphone as No. 5 nationally ranked LSU (6-0) hosts Western Kentucky (6-1) Saturday at 7pm.

Are there any factors in your childhood that contributed to where you are spiritually today?

I had a mom who taught me to be committed to my faith, and I had a dad who taught me to be faithful to my commitments. That’s what I grew up with.

I had a praying mama who taught me the importance of prayer, the importance of worship, and that’s where I learned about Jesus. That’s where I learned about my faith; that’s where I learned about commitment. I came up through a public-school system, but that didn’t keep my mom from making sure we had everything we needed in terms of catechetical teaching. “PSR,” it’s called now, but it was catechism for us.

We had a church on campus in college, so in college we were very active in the Newman Club at Nichols. And when the liturgy was changed to introduce commentators and lectors and such, I signed up for that because I liked doing that. I actually never served at Mass until I was in college — began altar serving in college and commentating and reading the epistles.

How do you find the time to juggle all of your various roles, especially sports announcer?

When you look at the whole year, it’s seven or eight Saturday nights in Death Valley, sometimes Saturday afternoons now. Those can be planned way ahead. I have a very considerate pastor who understands when I might not be able to assist at a Mass on a Saturday afternoon because I might be at the stadium. You can plan that. Basketball dates — there are about 17 of those — can be planned pretty much into the future, too. Management of time is a discernment process that involves how best to utilize the time that you have to address the responsibilities that happen to be presenting at any given time. That’s a long way of saying I love being busy. I have a very, very supportive wife, a very supportive group of children and grandchildren who understand that sometimes Dad has to be off doing something different while other things are going on at home. That’s always been the case; from the very beginning of our courtship, Lizette has been an incredible help in helping facilitate for me activities that feed me but also feed the family in a lot of ways because the kids love basketball. They love football. My wife is a very devout Catholic who has her own spiritual direction ministry, almost a full-time ministry. She’s called to do that. I enjoy being busy. I love my work with Father Tom Ranzino; I love my work with the bishop [Robert Muench], because I have some chancery assignments as well as my parochial assignments. I love the opportunity to serve the Lord, to serve people, and I love being in Tiger Stadium on Saturday nights.

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