Welcome Fr. Robert Healey, Our New Associate Pastor

Fr. Robert Healey was in college when he felt the Lord calling him to the priesthood.

While he had previously considered it in his early life, it wasn’t until he was in between his junior and senior years that he thought about what this might mean for his life.

“In a sense, I have wanted to be a priest since I was a kid, when I was 7, being an altar boy at church,” Fr. Healey says. “I would say that it was during my time in college that the practical implication of the vocation to the priesthood began to gnaw at me.”

Born and raised in Tulsa, Fr. Healey proceeded into seminary studies after graduating from Benedictine College. Since his ordination in 2020, Fr. Healey has spent the last two years as the associate pastor at St. Anne Catholic Church of Broken Arrow. Now, he joins us here at St. Francis Xavier as our new associate pastor.

When he arrived at St. Anne, Fr. Healey says he didn’t know what to expect, but his time was very blessed.

“It is overwhelming the way the Lord has showered graces and blessings on me,” Fr. Healey says.

There are two aspects to his early priesthood that Fr. Healey has most cherished — saying Mass and hearing Confessions. Being in the confessional as both a confessor and confessee has been an incredible experience for him, having even gone to Confession with a fellow brother seminarian once he had been ordained.

“To have the experience of going to Confession, telling my own sins to another priest, then being on the other side, and hearing from the confessional — it was so powerful,” he says.

Fr. Healey is excited to continue his priesthood at his new assignment here at St. Francis Xavier. He continues to look forward to whatever the Lord has in mind, as the assignment itself comes from God. “Holy orders are not just a human order, it’s God doing this Himself,” he says. “I’m very excited to get to know people and be able to draw them towards the Lord as much as I can, with my strengths and knowledge and experiences I’ve had.”

On a more personal level, some “fun facts” about Fr. Healey are that he enjoys music, sports, camping, hiking, and kayaking. He also achieved the rank of Eagle Scout as a Boy Scout. When he was in college, he also wrote a stage musical that he performed with some of his friends. He has devotions to many saints, but St. Therese of Lisieux holds a particularly special place in his spiritual life.