Rev. Fr. Dale Branson became a priest “to serve God and his people”

By Mary Lim

On January 18, Fr. Dale Branson will celebrate his ordination anniversary of 26 years in the priesthood and serving the Diocese of Tucson. Fr. Branson was ordained on January 18, 1997 by Bishop Manuel Moreno. He is currently the pastor at St. Michael the Archangel Parish in San Tan Valley. Previously, he had served at St. Ambrose in Tucson, and then St. Joseph in Hayden. He has spent his career as a priest serving the Diocese of Tucson, but his path to finding his home here with us was not by any means a direct one.

Fr. Branson’s parents and some of his siblings lived in Tucson, but he himself was living and working in a maquiladora in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico when he decided he “needed a career change”. His first career was as an Engineering Manager, and he was working towards becoming a junior college professor when he realized that “electronic production wasn’t cutting it.”

Branson needed something more and longed for a change, for a different life than what he was leading in his first career. He said, “Many people throughout my life have told me I would make a good priest. So, I decided I better try that.”

Fr. Branson recalled that, although the decision to pursue the Seminary was initially not necessarily a hard decision to make, it turned into a bit of a headache to persevere in.

He lists the series of events that took place and that, ultimately, brought him to the Diocese of Tucson, “I applied to a diocese and was told I was too smart to be a parish priest. I applied to another one, and they said I was too far right. I wrote a priest I knew on the East Coast, and he suggested five other dioceses I should write to. One said I had to live there a year before I could apply, another said I was too old, another never replied, another said they had too many seminarians already, and the last one said, ‘Come on out and let’s talk.’ I entered the seminary system for that diocese. I studied for them for 2.5 years and then transferred to the Diocese of Tucson.”

Sometimes, we may think that if we just figure out what it is that God is calling us to do with our lives, then it will be smooth sailing from there – if we could just name and pursue our true vocation, then life will be easy, right? Fr. Branson is here to be a witness to us that, even when we’ve found our vocation but things still seem to continue to beat us down, we can still pursue God’s will.

“My seminary experience was not ‘a nice time’,” says Fr. Branson, “but it helps to be hardheaded and not take ‘no’ for an answer.”

Seminaries are, after all, human institutions run by humans, so like other man-made things, there is always room for improvement. Fr. Branson shared that he attended St. John Fisher in Connecticut, St. Charles Borromeo in Pennsylvania, and Sacred Heart School of Theology in Wisconsin. Each seminary he attended proved to be a bit of a rough fit for him, but he persevered, for through it all he knew that this is what God was calling him to do.

Fr. Branson says that the first seeds of his vocation were planted when he was young, and he was inspired by the priests that he knew growing up as a military dependent. Throughout his trials during seminary, it was his childhood role models, and his mentor, Fr. John Borely, who encouraged him to stick with his decision to become a priest “to serve God and His people.”

Fr. Dale Branson has been with the Diocese of Tucson ever since, and he has been serving as the Pastor at St. Michael the Archangel since the parish was founded in 2011. He started out as a Parish Administrator, and he was responsible for taking part in the process of naming the parish, changing the finances to the new name, and establishing all new accounts for the parish.

When St. Michael the Archangel Parish was incorporated into the Diocese of Tucson in May of 2012, Bishop Kicanas announced that Rev. Fr. Dale Branson was to be the pastor of the church. Through Fr. Branson’s leadership, St. Michael the Archangel Parish has completed the construction of their Parish Center (multi-purpose building) and their administrative office building. Their next goal as a community is to be in a position to build the actual church building!

As a pastor, Fr. Branson has been working hard on the behind-the-scenes administrative, construction, and financial planning for his parish, but he says that his favorite part about being a priest is praying the Mass and preaching to and teaching the laity.

“I love celebrating the sacraments, as they are an opportunity to bring people into the Church and hopefully have a positive experience,” says Fr. Branson, “It is also a time for me to become closer to Our Lord by doing my best to imitate how he treated the people around him.”

Fr. Branson expands on why he loves the part of his vocation that allows him to be with the laity in their everyday lives: “I love being with the laity. They see and experience life in a way I am not able to [anymore]. They give me viewpoints that I would never be able to have, and they love their Church, which rubs off on me. As priests, we may start to take ‘holy, spiritual’ things for granted. The laity don’t. They enable me to see the things I do in a different light and to try to be better. Being with the laity is a joyful experience. After all, I was one once, and I was raised by them.”

Donate to the St. Michael the Archangel Parish Building Fund

Vocations in the Diocese of Tucson

Discerning your Vocation