Father Daniel Mode has been appointed head chaplain for the U.S. Coast Guard, a role based in Washington, D.C., where he oversees 157 other chaplains of different faiths.

Father Daniel Mode was also the chaplain for the “Lone Survivor” SEAL team in Afghanistan and has authored a book about the famed “Grunt Padre,” Father Vincent Capodanno.

Now there’s a new distinction on Mode’s impressive service record: leading the chaplaincy efforts of the U.S. Coast Guard, the first Catholic priest to hold that important role in 12 years.

Yet Mode, 57, says his greatest mission is bringing the peace of Jesus Christ to the service members and civilians to whom he ministers.

“Peace is kind of my mantra,” Mode said.

Wherever he goes, Mode said, “the biggest thing I hear from everyone is, ‘We would like another chaplain,’ and it goes back to what we said: People want their shepherds.”

Even in this new role, Mode continues to hear the same clear call from God to share Christ’s peace.

In the military, there is a tradition of commanders giving out memento coins as symbols of honor.

“When I became the chaplain of the Coast Guard,” Mode said, “I got to design that coin. And at the bottom of that coin, I had the word ‘PAX’ — ‘peace’ in Latin.”

Father Mode grew up in a Navy family and moved around frequently, attending Bishop Denis J. O’Connell High School in Arlington, Virginia, as a teen. He was ordained in 1992 in the Diocese of Arlington, where he served for 13 years, pastoring Queen of the Apostles Parish in Alexandria from 2001 to 2005.

He was deployed as a chaplain to Afghanistan in 2005, and within the first 24 hours of being in theater he came face-to-face with the realities of war.

“I had my first death,” he said. “The soldier died in my arms in a field hospital in Kandahar.”

After ministering to service members in Afghanistan for 22 months, Mode said he realized the “amazing need for chaplains” and felt a “call within a call” to continue serving those who serve.

Since receiving his bishop’s permission to become a full-time, active military chaplain in 2007, Mode has worked to share God’s peace in his ministry all over the world. He has spent nine years overseas, seven of those years on ships and aircraft carriers.

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