By Rita McInerney

Father Edward Branch has begun his work as the first full-time Newman director at Atlanta University Center.

A priest of the Louisville, Ky., diocese with 10 years in campus ministry, Father Branch hopes to be of service to the faith development of Catholic students and to be open to all students of the seven-institute center.

He estimates that there may be about 1,000 Catholic students at the seven colleges and universities of Atlanta University. They are Spelman College, Morris Brown College, Clark-Atlanta University, Morehouse College and Morehouse College of Medicine, and the Interdenominational Theological Seminary.

Father Branch, a native of Washington, D.C., received his doctorate in ministry last spring from Howard University. He was hired in May by Archbishop Eugene A. Marino, SSJ. The archbishop believed, Father Branch said, that a full-time Newman ministry was needed at Atlanta University Center with its combined registration of about 11,000 students.

Father Branch said he felt “It was quite an honor to have been asked to come to these universities” by the archbishop.

He said the Newman program and center at Atlanta University Center “will focus heavily on the history of African-American Catholics in the United States and the contributions of African peoples to the Catholic Church at large so that students will be able to recognize and take responsibility for the growth of the Church.”

He has been working with about 20 or 30 students who make up the Newman organization on campus at present.

First order of business, he said, was to find a temporary building, the second to “firm up” the Newman program and the third, to “bring a permanent center into existence.”

Father Branch was director of the Newman Center and pastor of St. Benedict the Black parish at Grambling University in northern Louisiana from 1979 until 1982. The center was attached to the parish. The university had an enrollment of about 4,000 students at the time, 300 of them Catholic. “We saw most of them on Sunday,” he recalled. There were about 54 families in the parish.

He succeeded Bishop James P. Lyke, OFM, as Newman director and pastor at Grambling in 1979 when the Franciscan was named auxiliary bishop in Cleveland.

During his years at Grambling, Father Joe Cavallo, a priest of the archdiocese who died Nov. 7, wanted him to come and speak to the students at Atlanta University but there was not money to pay traveling expenses.

Father Branch left Grambling in 1982 and spent the next six years as chaplain at Catholic University in Washington, D.C.

Now 45, Father Branch said he decided in the sixth grade to enter religious life. His first choice, some years later, was to become an Xavierian brother. He served in this order eight years, the last assignment at Flaget High School in Louisville.

It was a combination of maturity, coming to self-awareness, answering a long-term desire, and being impressed by priests and sisters he had known and been taught by that drew him to the priesthood.

He mentions the Oblate Sisters of Providence and the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur as being influential in his Catholic education.

He entered the Louisville diocesan seminary and spent three years preparing for priesthood, 1971-74.

After ordination he served for five years as administrator of St. Benedict parish in Louisville.

Father Branch, who has known Bishop Lyke since 1963, has been a member of the National Black Clergy Caucus since 1967. He served as president of the organization from 1982-85. He was an initiating board member of the National Office of Black Catholics and served three terms on the board, beginning in 1969.

He has been actively involved with the National Black Catholic Congress and numerous other organizations.