Local priest serves veterans as a chaplain

By Ruby Thomas, Record Staff Writer
Father Benedict Brown has a calming presence that doesn’t falter, even as he described how an explosive device landed near his sleeping quarters and injured a friend during a tour of duty with the United States Marine Corps in 2004.

Father Brown — administrator of St. Ambrose and St. Ignatius churches in Hardin County, Ky. — has been a chaplain for the U.S. military for nearly 30 years.

Most recently, he was assigned as chaplain of the newly constructed Radcliff Veterans Center in Radcliff, Ky., a position he accepted in December 2016.

According to a July report by Catholic News Service (CNS), priests like Father Brown are in short supply. The CNS report said there’s an estimated 214 Catholic military chaplains, about eight percent of the chaplain corps.

According to the United States Department of Defense, about 25 percent of the 1.3 million active duty and 811,000 reserve men and women serving in the U.S. military, are Catholic.

The veterans’ center where Father Brown now serves is a 120-bed long-term care facility built on 190 acres of land donated by Fort Knox, located less than a mile from the “gold vault.”

Father Brown provides religious services and ministries to veterans and staff.

“I will do so as a veteran myself, as someone who is knowledgeable about their experiences,” he noted during a recent interview.

The center is open to residents of Kentucky who gave at least six months of active duty service and were honorably discharged from the military.

Father Brown said veterans sometimes need someone to talk to who can “speak their language.”

“Vets are proud of their service, most often,” he said.

Sometimes, though, they’re not proud of their service or they feel the need to “lay to rest moral questions and dilemmas” related to their service, the priest noted.

Other veterans like spending time “reminiscing about experiences, both positive and negative,” he said.

“Some of the decisions they made haunt them,” said Father Brown. It helps veterans to have someone to listen to their story and know what they are talking about, he said.

Father Brown grew up in Louisville’s West End, one of 14 siblings, four of whom served in the U.S. military simultaneously. Two of his brothers served in Vietnam.

Despite his exposure to military life, Father Brown said he never thought he’d serve.

But in the Spring of 1990, Father Brown said he learned the U.S. Navy Reserve Center in Louisville needed a priest to celebrate Mass twice a month. He decided to help out and that’s when the late Archbishop Thomas C. Kelly suggested he consider becoming a chaplain in the military.

Archbishop Kelly pointed out, Father Brown said, that two percent of those serving in the U.S. military at the time were Catholic and that they needed a priest. With the archbishop’s guidance, Father Brown signed on as a reservist in the Navy in 1990.

Three years later he signed up for active duty, which led to travels around the world including four tours in the Middle East.

Father Brown was in England through a military exchange program during the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the U.S. As a result of those attacks, the British government sent troops to the Middle East. Ten days after the attacks, Father Brown said he was in the country of Oman where he ministered to British troops in the Arabian desert.

“It was 130 degrees in the desert,” Father Brown recalled. “It felt like putting your face in the oven and leaving it there.”

Everybody in the U.S. was wondering what was going on at that time, Father Brown recalled. Members of his family were no exception.

He used his one allotted phone call upon arriving in Oman to let his family know he was fine.

“I had to settle my family’s nerves then get on with doing my job,” said Father Brown. Part of that job, noted Father Brown, was helping the British troops cope with concerns for their loved ones.

A military chaplain’s duties in some ways are just like those of other priests, Father Brown said. His duties included baptisms, confirmations, marriage preparation, Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA), funerals and last rites for members of the armed forces, wherever they are.

The “hard work” of being a chaplain usually starts, said Father Brown, upon returning from a deployment. He recalled returning to England four months following the Sept. 11 attacks.

“When I returned is when the hard work began of notifying next of kin, meeting flag-draped coffins at the airport and doing memorial services,” said Father Brown.

Whether it’s ministering to veterans in Kentucky, hiking in the desert with Marines or aboard a ship with members of the Navy, the work of a chaplain is all about “serving the church beyond the diocese,” said Father Brown. “I’m excited and pleased with the center (for veterans in Radcliff). It will do an enormous amount of good.”