Profile
An ethnic Rapa Nui, Fr. Francisco Nahoe, OFMConv., was the first of his Easter Island father’s four children born in the United States. Having graduated from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, he began discerning a vocation to the priesthood at the University of Arizona, where he became acquainted with a number of Dominican friars, including Fr Paul Raftery OP, who would later become a chaplain at TAC. From Tucson, he transferred to Pomona College in Claremont, California, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in philosophy.
“In college, under the spiritual direction of Dominicans, I was surrounded by young Catholics who were on fire for their faith,” Fr. Francisco says. “Their witness led me to consider deeply the possibility of a religious vocation. In fact, it was a Dominican brother who took me to visit the Conventual Franciscans. There, my experience of the presence of God with the friars at prayer led me to a deeper encounter with the spirituality of Saint Francis.” He entered the novitiate of the Friars Minor Conventual in 1984.
Fr. Francisco studied at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley but finished the STB at the Pontifical Seraphicum in Rome, where he was ordained to the diaconate. He then returned to California to begin teaching in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and, in 1994, was ordained to the priesthood at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Hermosa Beach.
For eight years, he taught AP English at Bishop Mongomery High School in Torrance, California, and served local parishes and a Korean apostolate in sacramental ministry. From Los Angeles, he was sent to San Francisco to work in development at the National Shrine of Saint Francis of Assisi. In 2003, he returned to Andover MA where he joined the faculty of Phillips Academy as their Roman Catholic chaplain and an instructor in English. In the course of his time in New England, he would earn an master’s degree in Comparative Literature at Dartmouth College and the ThM degree in Biblical Studies at the Harvard Divinity School.
In 2006, Fr. Francisco was called back to California to serve as the Director of Franciscan Postulants. Then, from 2010 to 2015, he was rector of St. Thomas Aquinas Cathedral in Reno, Nevada. During his tenure there, he earned a doctorate in Renaissance Literature at the University of Nevada. Starting in 2017, he taught rhetoric and philosophy at Zaytuna College in Berkeley until coming to Thomas Aquinas College in 2025.
“The beauty of the liturgy at the College is beyond remarkable,” he says. “It is commendable that the College places such a great emphasis on developing and nurturing Catholic life. I thank the Lord and my Minister Provincial every day for sending me here.”