Daniel was born and raised in Baltimore, MD. From an early age, family members noted that he had a strong faith, but after moving out of the family home at age nineteen, he let the regular practice of the Faith slide. He attended Baltimore International Culinary College and worked in the food service industry in various capacities for fifteen years. During that time, at age twenty-seven, he experienced a reversion to his Faith while on a Marian pilgrimage and became part of a young adult prayer group where vocations were openly discussed. He responded to an invitation from his pastor, who was a Franciscan, to attend a come-and-see weekend. Discerning a call to religious life, he joined the Franciscans of Primitive Observance in New Bedford, MA in1999.

Although he had taken final vows as a permanent lay brother, Daniel sensed a “call-within-a-call" in 2018 and began studying for the priesthood at St. John’s Seminary in Brighton. In July of 2023, he decided to leave the Franciscans and was then accepted as a seminarian for Diocesan priesthood for the Archdiocese of Boston.