Eamon Carroll Collection

Father Carroll, Order of Carmelites, Province of The Most Pure Heart of Mary, was born Richard Joseph Carroll. He entered the Order of the Carmelites in 1935 and began formal studies at their preparatory seminary in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, continuing with the Carmelite novitiate at New Baltimore, PA, and adopting his religious name of Eamon in 1940.

He attended grade school at Saint Anselm Parish and at Holy Cross Parish in Chicago between 1927 and 1935. In 1943, he received a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Mount Carmel College at Niagara Falls. That same year, he transferred to the Province's major seminary at Whitefriars Hall in Washington, D.C., and, in August 1943, professed his vows. He also studied physics and French at nearby Catholic University. He was ordained a priest on June 8, 1946 at Saint Clara Catholic Church, a parish administered by the Carmelites in Chicago.

In 1947, Father Carroll's first assignment was on the faculty of Mount Carmel High School in Chicago. While teaching, he also studied languages: German at Loyola University and Greek, Hebrew, and Polish at the University of Chicago. In 1949, he was both professor and student at the Carmelite's International College of Saint Albert, Rome, Italy, where he taught Carmelite seminarians and continued his own graduate studies.

He received a Licentiate in Sacred Theology (S.T.L.) degree in 1951 from the Pontifical Gregorian University, and a doctorate in Sacred Theology (S.T.D.) from the Gregorian in 1962. During this time, he also completed additional courses in Greek at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome.

Father Carroll taught at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. (1957-1980). Several times he was president of the Catholic Theological Society of America and the Mariological Society of America. In 1989 he was awarded the Patronal Medal for his distinguished service in the advancement of Marian devotion and theology.

In 1980, he accepted the position of professor of theology at Loyola University in Chicago, retiring as professor emeritus in 1993. By this time, he was also on the staff at the International Marian Research Institute, centered at the Marian Library of the University of Dayton, where he was also on the faculty of the summer studies program.

Author of "Understanding The Mother of Jesus" (M. Glazier, Inc., 1979), and contributing author of the New Catholic Encyclopedia and theological journals, he was also a consultant for the interior iconography of the Shrine of The Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.

He was a charter member of the English Ecumenical society of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and a founding member of that society's U.S. counterpart. Father Carroll has been included in several editions of the American Catholic Who's Who.

Biographical information courtesy of Order of Carmelites, Province of The Most Pure Heart of Mary.