Albert Braun was educated at Saint Joseph’s School, Los Angeles, California, and Saint Anthony’s College, Santa Barbara, and received his theological training at Santa Barbara Seminary and Saint Louis (Missouri) seminary. He was ordained a Catholic Priest of the Franciscan Order on July 5, 1915. He served as a U.S. Army chaplain in both World War I and World War II. After World War I, as a missionary to the Mescalero Apache Tribe, he helped to construct Saint Joseph Apache Mission Church, finished in 1939. He returned to military service in 1940, and became a prisoner of war after the fall of Corregidor in the Philippine Islands in 1941. He was liberated after 40 months as a POW, at Camp Omori in Tokyo Bay, Japan, on August 29, 1945. After the war he returned to the Fruitvale Neighborhood of Oakland, California, where he requested and received permission from the Provincial to go back to the Mescalero. He left the parish in 1962, but remained involved in the church at various capacities until his death in 1983. In 1965 he received the Arizona Medal of Honor, and in 1979 received the Arizona Veterans Hall of Fame Award.