Fr. Daniel McMullin has been a priest since 1981. At that time, he was a member of St. John’s Abbey, a Benedictine community in Collegeville, Minnesota. Fr. Daniel served as choirmaster and taught music in the community’s university. He also taught music and directed a study abroad program for Rosary College (now Dominican University) in River Forest, Illinois.

Earning a doctorate from the Eastman School of Music brought him to Rochester, New York. After some years of discernment, Pope John Paul II dispensed Fr. Daniel from monastic vows in 1998, after which Bishop Matthew Clark incardinated him into the Diocese of Rochester.

Throughout his years of priesthood, Fr. Daniel has had several full-time parish assignments coupled with part-time university chaplaincies. In 2005 Bishop Clark appointed him full-time director of the Cornell Catholic Community with the canonical designation of chaplain (Code of Canon Law, cann. 567-572).

Between 2012 and 2019, and with the bishop’s blessing, Fr. Daniel served Cornell University as Associate Dean of Students and director of Cornell United Religious Work. In 2019, at the invitation of Bishop Salvatore Matano, the present bishop of Rochester, Fr. Daniel returned to full-time ministry with a joint assignment as director of both the Catholic Community at Cornell and Ithaca College Catholic Community.

Fr. Daniel has served the Diocese as a member of the Presbyteral Council and president of the Diocesan Music Commission. He is past treasurer of the New York State Priests’ Council. Fr. Daniel is also a trained spiritual director. In his spare time, he enjoys travelling, visiting his large clan of siblings and cousins, expanding his family tree (which has documented branches extending back to the Norman Conquest), and reading.