Father Michael B. McGarry, C.S.P. at the Paulist-run Tantur Ecumenical Institute in Jerusalem.Father Michael B. McGarry, CSP at the Paulist-run Tantur Ecumenical Institute in Jerusalem. He will take office as the 18th president of the Paulist Fathers in May.

Father Michael McGarry, CSP

Can a priest be a modern man?

This was the question posed in a 1965 advertisement in The Sign magazine of the Passionist Fathers.

A young Michael McGarry was fascinated by the query and the challenge it held.

“I thought it was a great question then, and I think it’s still a good question,” said Father McGarry, who will leave his post as the director of the Tantur Ecumenical Institute in Jerusalem to serve as the 18th president of the Paulist Fathers. He will officially take office on May 18, 2010, immediately after current president Father John F. Duffy gives his general report to the elected assembly delegates at the 2010 Paulist General Assembly.

Father McGarry said the “fine work” of the current Paulist administration, headed by outgoing president Father John F. Duffy, CSP, “has positioned us well to address the pressing issues of personnel … finances and translating the Gospel to the present age.”

“I hope to build on [Father Duffy’s] administration by strengthening our national and regional ministries as well as our very important foundations across the country” with the guidance of the Paulist General Assembly and General Council, he continued.

Father Michael B. McGarry, C.S.P. at the Paulist-run Tantur Ecumenical Institute in Jerusalem.Father Michael B. McGarry, CSP at the Paulist-run Tantur Ecumenical Institute in Jerusalem. He will take office as the 18th president of the Paulist Fathers in May.

Father McGarry, 61, was born in Los Angeles in 1948. His path to the Paulist priesthood began with an admiration of the diocesan priests that served his home parish of St. Jerome in southwest Los Angeles. The future Paulist knew he wanted to be come a priest around the age of 8.

“I enjoyed serving at Mass,” he recalled, later writing to the Paulists because. “… their vocation material spoke to what I wanted to be as a priest. I admired the creative and bold ministry of the Paulists.”

The future Paulist entered the order’s novitiate in September 1968. Father McGarry was in the last class to graduate from the Paulist minor seminary, St. Peter’s College in Baltimore, and the last class to be granted undergraduate degrees in philosophy from St. Paul’s College in Washington D.C., where today’s Paulist novitiate is housed and seminarians go through formation while attending classes at Catholic University or Washington Theological Union.

After graduating from St. Paul’s, Father McGarry participated in what he describes as a “unique experiment” in Paulist formation at the University of St. Michael’s College in Toronto.

“A small number of Paulist students discerned their Paulist vocation, and I am most grateful to be among those who studied in Toronto,” he said.

After he years of study and formation, Father McGarry was ordained a Paulist priest on May 17, 1975.

Father Michael B. McGarry, CSP

Ministering to the needs of the students and community at the University Catholic Center at the University of Texas at Austin was Father McGarry’s first priestly assignment, from 1975-78. He then served at the Paulist Center in Boston from 1978-79 before becoming the center director from 1979-86.

He spent a semester sabbatical being educated in Jewish studies at Hebrew University of Jerusalem before being named director of formation for the Paulist Fathers (1986-93) at St. Paul’s College in Washington, D.C.

Father McGarry then moved across the country to serve as pastor of Holy Spirit Parish at the University of California at Berkeley, serving in that capacity from 1993-1999.

His next assignment took him half way around the world, as Father McGarry took the post of rector of the Tantur Ecumenical Institute for Theological Studies in Jerusalem. He has written extensively on Christian-Jewish relations (including Christology After Auschwitz) and serves on the Advisory Board for Christian-Jewish Relations for the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops.

Throughout his Paulist priesthood, Father McGarry said he has had the “privilege of being part of an energetic and creative group of men on fire with the Gospel.”

“This has stretched me and inspired me to do the same,” he said.