Father William Dougherty can’t exactly say why he became a priest, only that he found it “something that would satisfy my outlook on life. The Paulist vocation was the answer to that.” He is now celebrating the 50th anniversary of his 1963 ordination and can look back on a rich legacy of faith.

Father Dougherty, now 83 years old, was born to George and Dorothy Dougherty. Mr. Dougherty was a Prudential insurance agent and worked at the Philadelphia Navy Yard while Mrs. Dougherty worked at raising young William and his five siblings.

“We weren’t a pray-the-rosary type of family, but we went to Mass,” said Father Dougherty, who mentioned that his childhood parish – the now-closed Most Blessed Sacrament Church – was a hotbed of vocations in its heyday.

“There were about 1,000 vocations of priests and sisters in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s,” he recalled.

After graduating from high school, the future Paulist worked at a bank for the couple years before serving in the Air Force from 1954-51. Father Dougherty then studied philosophy at LaSalle University in Philadelphia for two-and-a-half years before deciding to pursue the priesthood. He finished his collegiate career at St. Paul’s College in Washington, D.C. He was ordained a Paulist priest on May 11, 1963.

After serving a summer assignment at Good Shepherd Parish in New York City, Father Dougherty spent his pastoral year at the Paulist Center in Boston from 1963-64. He then became associate pastor at St. Paul the Apostle in Richardson, Texas, from 1964-67 before entering campus ministry at St. Mark’s University Parish serving the University of California at Santa Barbara from 1968-70.

Father Dougherty continued in campus ministry as director of the St. Thomas More Newman Center at The Ohio State University in Columbus from 1970-74. He returned to Boston as the director of the Paulist Center from 1974-78 before rejoining campus ministry, this time as the director of the Newman Apostolate (now the University Catholic Center) at the University of Texas at Austin from 1978-85. Father Dougherty then studied at the Mexican American Cultural Center in San Antonio, Texas, before becoming associate pastor at St. Cyril’s Church in Tucson, Ariz., in 1986. He retired from active ministry in 2004 and still resides in Tucson.

“It has been a wonderful vocation,” said Father Dougherty, “meeting people, working with people, worshipping with them … being part of their lives, their worship, their struggles.”

Looking back over five decades of ministry, Father Dougherty said he found sustenance in his priesthood by the very fact that “I was doing what I do best and using my talents in the best way.”

And what advice would this veteran priest give to someone discerning the priesthood?

“Talk to different priests, see what their experience has been,” he said. “See what interests them and what their ministry is like.”