Deacon Brian Daley Pilot file photo
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This is the first article in a series profiling the six men who will be ordained to the priesthood for the Archdiocese of Boston at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross on May 17, 2025.
BRIGHTON -- Deacon Brian R. Daley says being Catholic is much like being on a high school football team.
"It's not about you," Deacon Daley told The Pilot on Feb. 13. "God loves you and cares about you as an individual, and you are undoubtedly a beautiful, important member of the church that functions in a unique way, as St. Paul teaches us. But, ultimately, the notion of sacrificing for the sake of the team, emptying yourself in love as a member of the church, again recognizing the Father's love for you. That spirituality was so rooted, in hindsight, in my experience of football."
Deacon Daley, 37, is a seminarian at St. John's Seminary in Brighton and a transitional deacon at Sacred Hearts Parish in Bradford. He recalled trying out for the football team at St. Bernard School in Uncasville, Connecticut, when he was a nervous sophomore. Deacon Daley said he was not a football lover, but wanted a challenge. He and his brother attended orientation for the St. Bernard Saints. The coach, Duane Maranda, asked the Daley brothers if they had ever played football. They said no.
"Okay," Maranda replied. "I'll see you at practice next week."
Deacon Daley said the first few practices were excruciating, the hardest physical labor he had experienced. After practice, Maranda would put his arm around Deacon Daley and ask how it went.
"I lied through my teeth to him," the deacon recalled. "I told him that I enjoyed it."
He considered quitting but continued because he wanted to be there for Maranda, who became like a second father to him.
"He demanded something of me, which was something totally new," Deacon Daley said. "He set an expectation for me and demanded it of me. And I felt as though I couldn't say no. Call that the Holy Spirit or whatever."
Maranda led a close-knit team. Deacon Daley, one of the bigger players, was an offensive tackle and a defensive end. The Saints won their division conference two years in a row during his time at St. Bernard. Deacon Daley said his high school football days did not make him want to become a priest, but he believes they taught him skills he needs for the priesthood.
"That helped me to discover, in a deeper spiritual sense, the son and father relationship and the importance," he said. "We don't really live virtuously in a deep, meaningful way until we do it out of love for the Father and in recognition of his love for us."
Whether on the football field, on ships as an engineer, or at St. John's Seminary, he said his experiences have taught him "how essential fraternity is."
"It's learning how to sacrifice for others, whether it's for the sake of winning or for a much bigger, more important thing, like helping the church to fulfill the mission that Christ ordained for it," he said.
Deacon Daley grew up in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, the oldest of six children. His parents wanted four children, but the "fourth child" turned out to be triplets.
"My mother was kind of the Catholic stronghold of the family, and she remains that way today," he said. "And my father has definitely grown a lot stronger in his faith, both because of my mother's steadfast faith and also because of my own vocation."
He attended Catholic school from second to seventh grade and spent two years in homeschool before attending St. Bernard, where he said his strengths were math and science. He always knew he wanted to be an engineer and to have a job that would allow him to travel.
"I didn't want to sit at a desk," he said.
After graduating from St. Bernard, he studied at Massachusetts Maritime Academy, his first experience with secular education. He then worked as an engineer on ships, which took him to Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, the Mariana Islands, and Singapore.
"It was extremely illuminating, and admittedly sometimes very difficult," he said. "Service to the poor is so central to our faith, but experiencing a deeply poor country for the first time in my life was very illuminating."
He said his travels forced him to "go deeper" and question his expectations.
"The cultural experiences definitely formed me and helped me to relate to other people better," he said, "because, in spite of the fact that they were difficult, I was deeply interested in them and wanted to get to know the people, the areas I was visiting."
He said it sometimes got lonely on the ships, but he learned to "enjoy the solitude."
"I really enjoyed working with my hands but I wanted something more," he said. "I was always eager to get off the ship and be with people."
He noticed his friends "living for the weekend" and spending their free time drinking and "gallivanting." He wanted more out of life than that, but having drifted from the faith, he did not know how to articulate his views. He said that as an engineer and as a human being, faith always guided his decisions.
"I didn't really quite understand what faith was, but I knew I needed it," he said.
He went to the Archdiocese of Boston website and reached out to Catholic groups in the area. He discerned a vocation with former Vocations Director Father Daniel Hennessy and his successor, Father Eric Cadin. Deacon Daley attended a men's discernment evening in Boston's Seaport District, where he met Dominican Brother Desmond Conway, then entering seminary. Deacon Daley called Brother Desmond "somebody who really challenged me in a way that I hadn't been challenged before."
"He really helped to, just by being who he was, express the reality that good, holy, faithful, normal guys can be Catholic," he said.
Deacon Daley said he felt some "prejudices" against the church following the clergy sexual abuse scandals. He said Brother Desmond made those prejudices disappear. He introduced Deacon Daley to Opus Dei, and the deacon quickly became interested in the way the group would "sanctify their work and lift it up to God." The message resonated with him. At the time, he was working long hours at the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth. Like his time on the ships, he struggled to find a higher purpose in his work.
"More than anything, it was just being able to be part of this community of men that loved, that were doing great things in the world for the sake of their love, to deepen their love for God," he said.
Deacon Daley never formally joined Opus Dei, though he was inspired by them. He received spiritual direction from Father Jeff Langan, a priest of the Prelature of Opus Dei. Deacon Daley started reading and praying more, and attending Mass daily. He became involved in the Harvard Catholic Center and saw that faith and reason could coexist and strengthen one another.
"And this all sort of naturally led to entering into the seminary," he said.
He entered St. John's Seminary in fall 2019. At the time, he said he was not sure if he would become a priest.
"The only thing that I was confident about was that this was the next right step, but I wasn't certain at all," he said. "I knew I needed a lot. I had a ways to go."
He had been in close romantic relationships with several women before entering the seminary. He said there were several women he wanted to marry and spend his life with, but he was never able to "take the next step." He was also struggling with his own faith. Deacon Daley said it was hard to trade his dreams of marriage and family for the priesthood, but his time in the seminary made the vocation of marriage, and his own vocation, seem even more beautiful.
"God wants to fulfill our deepest desires," he said.
He wanted to give his time at St. John's everything he had, even if the priesthood did not turn out to be for him. With all his experience coming into the seminary, he thought he "had more to offer than the average person."
"I learned over the course of the years that wasn't true at all," he said. "I just had different things to offer -- not better, just different ones -- and I learned so much about myself just getting to know the other guys here. And I continue to, and I really look forward to growing deeper, God willing, in our relationships together as future priests."
He said those friendships have been strengthened by his time on the St. John's Seminary basketball team.
"Being able to run up a hill at 5 o'clock in the morning, when it's like 10 degrees outside, just hits differently when you do that as a community," he said. "It teaches you things that other things just can't about how essential relationships are to sacrifice. It's a small wonder that Christ made the church a community and not just one person."
He said he hesitates to use the word "surreal," saying it is overused, but that is how he feels knowing he will soon be a priest.
"It's inexpressible," he said. "I think the priesthood is not a vocation that one realizes in a particular moment. I think it's a lifelong journey to God's ultimate plan for you."
He said he will not know the exact details of that plan until he gets to heaven.
"I think that's exactly what the priesthood is about," he said, "learning how God is going to save me over the course of my life and save others -- many, many others -- through me."