Editor’s Note: Matthew Chicoine interviewed Sean Bryan via phone call on September 12th, 2025. Some of the questions/answers have been rearranged, edited, and paraphrased to provide the best reader experience without losing any integrity of the answers given.
How did your journey of faith lead you to embrace the mission of being the “Papal Ninja”?
Providence throughout my whole life, I have always been athletic. I did gymnastics through college. When I was with the Salesians, I was doing athletics through youth ministry work. After my time with the Salesians, I continued to do gymnastics. I saw one of my former teammates from when I was on the gymnastics team at Cal Berkeley participate on the show. I found a Ninja gym in my area. I found the culture of Ninja Warrior inspiring and I found a community there. Some of the veterans took me under their wing and gave me advice.
When I was developing my story, they told me that people want to hear about you being Catholic. So I took on the name Papal Ninja. In the talks that I give for the youth, I tell them that they are papal ninjas too. Ninjas are individuals who are skilled in training and following the master. And papal refers to the Vicar of Christ. So anyone who is Catholic is technically a papal ninja following the Master of Christ.
Tell more about your time with the Salesians.
I was initially discerning the priesthood during my last year of college. I applied to the seminary through the Diocese of Newark, NJ. Due to having taken a fifth year, I only needed one course. As an undergraduate I took two courses (one on the Trinity and the other on Religious Experience and the Young with a Salesian sister). I felt comfortable around the Salesians. And I went to dinner at their house and felt like family.
I asked to stay at the Salesian house that summer of 2008, I started reading more about Saint Don Bosco. I reached out to the rector of the seminary and asked him about permission to enter the discernment process for the Salesian community. Eventually, I discerned out in 2012, but still felt called to share the Gospel.
At the time, I was under the impression that if you wanted to take the faith seriously as a man you had to be a priest. I had thought that the “higher” was the priesthood. I didn’t really understand that, but I started to understand vocation when I was seeing holy lay persons in my time of ministry with the Salesians.
When I started studying theology, I started to connect with the president, Fr. Michael Sweeney, of the school as I was helping them with the media. I spent a lot of time with amazing lay people from across the world. I realized that lay people are the primary evangelists in the world. In 2016, I helped Fr. Michael Sweeney develop this catechist formation. It became the Lay Mission Project.
We are going to be doing a yearly cohort instead of every three years. Next year, we are going to open the doors of this project to others outside of the Dioceses of Oakland, Sacramento, and Los Angeles. We are going to be starting a cohort in the United Kingdom later this year.
In your work with the Lay Mission Project, what role do you see lay Catholics playing in evangelizing today’s culture?
They actually have the primary role in evangelizing and helping change the culture. In Lumen Gentium, it was the first time the role of the laity was articulated. Part of the reason the laity wasn’t articulated in the past was there was not a need for it. We are no longer living in an open to religious culture. The Catholic imagination that helped build Western civilization is not as strong and evident as it once was.
We are to be in the world as well as throughout the whole world. At the Lay Mission Project, we help the laity have an active role in evangelization. The Second Vatican Council is developing the paradigm of the laity to not just be passive.
So the laity is to discern how they can make God present in the places they are at. Because the Church has a poor recent understanding of the laity, there hasn’t been as much of a formation. Whenever there is a mission, formation follows. The average Catholic doesn’t feel like they are prepared to share their faith. There’s a sort of arrested development of the Catholic faith after Confirmation. If you have a stunted development you aren’t going to be as comfortable living out your Catholic faith in the world.
We help expose people to the Church and experience God with their hearts and we help them understand their unique role in the Church.
Because of the old paradigm about viewing the laity as passive, there was an inward focus that the laity needed to be associated as a catechist, teacher, or already involved in the Church.
The ministry is looking at the pastoral needs, apostolates refer to being sent out. Our hope is to have all Catholics receive this type of lay formation to help them in living out their Catholic faith. What we are trying to do is offer something systematic that isn’t currently offered in the Church at this time. We are focused on the ordinary pew Catholic who wants to help build up the Kingdom of God.
We are also being asked by the archbishop of San Francisco to offer a supplemental track for additional certification.
Competing on American Ninja Warrior demands discipline. How do you see parallels between athletic training and spiritual formation?
It’s 100% integrated. Think of the word disciple, it’s the same etymological root as discipline. Habits developed toward a particular good is a virtue. Anything we want to do to excel at requires virtue. Habits are actions that are repeated that make a thing easier to achieve. Athletes need discipline and we need time and repetition to develop our spiritual formation. If we are to be disciples we need to learn from our Lord and as we learn from Him we will act like Jesus.
What has been the most surprising or powerful way God has used your public witness to reach others?
One example is the simple witness to the faith does make huge impacts in ways you can’t even imagine. I don’t explain theological concepts on American Ninja Warrior. It is usually with the spirit moving in. For example, I was wearing my Papal Ninja shirt after I won the qualifier in Season 9. I had someone come up to me and say, “Once you hit that buzzer, I knew I needed to go back to church.” Other times, I have a number of people tell me that some things I posted on social media inspired them.
It doesn’t require too much effort to be a witness, it just takes a little bit of courage to change the culture of a group. Sometimes it takes a little bit of courage and it can start a dialogue. We just have to have the courage to show our faith.
When you are courageous you inspire the best in others and do things rightly in the world and orient them towards God.
I noticed your connection with aviation—since my dad has worked in the aviation industry for 50 years, I’d love to hear: what draws you to aviation, and how has it shaped you?
Ever since I was little I wanted to fly. I never wanted to fly as a career, but I was always fascinated by flight simulators. I always had a passion for flying. When I moved to California I was a couple miles from an airport so I went on a discovery flight. While I was initially scared, after the first few flights, I loved being up in the air and the technicality to it. I started with some flight training and I joined a flight club. And so I have access to a Cessna 172 and a Piper Dakota.
What advice would you give Catholics who want to live their faith more boldly in their everyday lives?
The fact that they want to is the most important part.The first step is the hardest. Any goal that seems overwhelming. But once you take that, the second step will happen.
If you want to live the faith more boldly, ask yourself why might you not want to live it more boldly, and what’s the next step? Do you need a different friend circle, more theology, or need to spend more time with our Lord?
Discern what is the impediment and what’s the next step. What I have observed in the Lay Mission, is not having a relationship with our Lord. Take the next step and be courageous.
About Sean
Sean co-founded the Lay Mission Institute with Fr. Michael Seeney, OP and now serves as Executive Director. He received his Bachelor’s of Arts at UC Berkeley, where he studied physics and was on the men’s gymnastics team. After graduation, he spent four years in various Salesian ministerial settings while discerning his vocation. In 2015 Sean completed his Master of Arts in Theology with a Salesian Studies concentration at the Dominican School of Philosophy & Theology. His Masters thesis analyzed the ecclesiology inherent to documents of the Second Vatican Council, and proposes the Scriptural notion of liturgy as an interpretive lens that elucidates the relationship between formal ritual worship and its integrated expression in everyday life. His exploration led to practical applications geared toward the animation of the faithful in the Church’s mission.
Sean is also known for his participation in the NBC show American Ninja Warrior, where he has taken on the identity of the Papal Ninja, stealthily accomplishing the mission of the One who sent him on a mission to the secular realm. Sean puts into practice what he preaches in the Lay Mission Institute formation by acting in accord with Lumen Gentium’s call “to make the Church present and operative in those places and circumstances where only through them (the laity) can it become the salt of the earth…” He has been featured on over 40 episodes of as the Papal Ninja since 2016, and is an active evangelizer in the digital realm.
