Tom Doran

Deacon
Phone: 817.510.2745
Email: Click Here to Email

If you walk into a Catholic Church in Texas and find an Irish American giving the homily with a crisp Bostonian accent, you can be sure that you are here in St. Michael Parish! Indeed, our faith community is greatly blessed to be able to call Deacon Tom Doran one of our own. While we have had an opportunity to get to know Deacon Tom during his three-year internship in our parish, this summer we were able to “officially” welcome him as a newly ordained deacon in the diocese.

As a young child, Deacon Tom could never have imagined that the Lord would one day call him to the permanent diaconate. Yet the experiences of his formative years — as a student in his parochial grade school and an altar server for his home parish in Boston — are what first opened the door to a vocation in the Church.

Though Deacon Tom is a lifelong Catholic, his relationship with Christ began deepening in a new way 10 years ago. “I was on a retreat and really had the opportunity to examine my relationship with God,” he says. “He had always been important in my life, but now I really felt the need for Him to be the center of my life. I began getting more involved in service and different ministries — I became a sacristan and rediscovered the joy I’d had serving at the altar as a child.” Deacon Tom soon developed a devotion to Eucharistic Adoration, and it was in the quiet solitude of prayer before the presence of Christ that he first heard a call to the diaconate. At the same time, people began to mention the vocation to him — his pastor asked him if he had ever considered becoming a deacon, and even his two daughters, teenagers at the time, echoed the question. “I mentioned it to my wife, Mary Ann, and she just smiled and said she saw a calling,” Deacon Tom says. “The diaconate is really a calling of the couple itself, and Mary Ann has been a wonderful support to me.”

With a background in teaching RCIA classes, Deacon Tom has enjoyed continuing this ministry here at St. Michael over the last three years. And now that he is an ordained deacon, he feels blessed to be serving our parish in many other ways as well. “It’s just a wonderful parish, and everyone is so warm and accepting and hospitable,” he says. “It’s a truly diverse parish, and it’s beautiful that everybody comes together as one community, for one liturgy. “It’s a blessing just being at the altar and proclaiming the Gospel, preparing people to receive the sacraments and administering the sacraments, and just being there for the people and walking with them in their faith journey,” Deacon Tom adds. “It gives me great joy to be able to share my faith, serve in different ministries of charity, and serve at the altar. It starts with the call, and the call is such joy.”