On March 7th, Professor Chris Padgett successfully defended his thesis, “The Life and Mariology of Father Juniper Carol, O.F.M,” earning his Licentiate in Sacred Theology at the Marianist Institute at the University of Dayton. Chris has been a faculty member since 2015 and will teach THEO 304 Foundations of Catholicism and THEO 640 Presenting the Faith in the Modern World: Dealing with the Hard Questions in the Summer I term.
Father Juniper Carol was born in 1911 in Cardenas, Cuba, and eventually came to the United States and joined the Franciscans. He started the Mariological Research Institute and published extensively on the predestination of Mary with Jesus, The Debitum Peccati, and Mary as coredemptrix, exploring her crucial role in salvation history. He died in 1990.
“I was first introduced to Carol through Mariology courses I took at Franciscan University of Steubenville,” Chris says. “I ended up having Dr. Mark Miravalle as my adviser, and I think that his love for Mary and the people he referenced had a big influence on me.”
Chris and his wife, Linda, have been married for more than 25 years and have nine children–five girls and four boys–and a couple of grandchildren. They live in Central New York on a little homestead in a nine-sided, red house and travel extensively. Chris and Linda and have a non-profit ministry for Marriages and Families called Catholic Family and Marriage, Inc. www.catholicfam.org. Chris is active on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
