Staff

Fr. Joseph Tran, copyright 2019, courtesy of Bettinger Photography

Father Joseph Tran, PASTOR

Fr. Joseph was born and raised in Saigon, a city in south Vietnam. He has three brothers and five sisters. Five of his siblings as well as his mother live in the United States.

At the age of 10, he received his vocation to the priesthood. Due to religious persecution by the Communist regime and poverty, he could not attend the seminary in Vietnam. Fr. Joseph prayed that he could escape and be in the land of true freedom to discern his vocation to serve God and His Church. God listened to his prayer. In May of 1986, when he was 16 years old, he left Vietnam by himself in a small fishing boat, which was on the ocean for seven days and nights. The boat landed in Thailand where he stayed in a refugee camp for five months until October 1986.

He was sponsored by the U.S. Catholic Charities and his older brother, who had also escaped Vietnam four years earlier, and was able to immigrate to St. Louis, Missouri. He lived there with his brother and finished high school and a year of community college. He then joined the Vietnamese Dominican religious order in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and was sent to Christ The King Seminary in Mission, British Columbia, and the Dominican University in Ottawa, Ontario, to finish his BA with a concentration in Philosophy. After finishing his studies, he asked his Superior for a year of absence so he could reflect deeply on his vocation before entering the novitiate, (a year of intense prayer and reflection before taking religious vows), which was granted.

He returned to St. Louis and worked for his older brother in the restaurant business for five years. Then, in 1998, at the request of his older sister, he moved to Denver, Colorado. He worked for one more year before returning to the seminary, However, he did not return to the Dominican religious order but instead entered St. John Vianney Seminary where he finished a year of Spirituality and four years of Theology. During this time he felt called to be a diocesan priest more than a religious priest, due to the strength of his pastoral ministry.

He was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Denver May 22, 2004. After ordination, he served as Parochial Vicar at St. Michael Parish in Aurora for three years. Then Fr. Joseph was sent to Immaculate Heart of Mary in Northglenn for 6 months as Assistant Pastor. Following that, he served as Pastor at St. Anthony of Padua in Julesburg and St. Peter in Crook for 4 years and 4 months before coming to St. Martin de Porres Parish in Boulder. He was pastor there for 5 years before coming to St. Joseph in Golden in June 2017.

He hopes to grow spiritually with each of us and to be "salt & light" to the whole world with all of us.