F
“I wanted to do something that impacted people’s lives,”
says Father Paul Henson, O.Carm. While that knowledge was
sure, it took some false starts before he knew Carmelite life
was for him.
Persistent call
pays off BY LESLIE SCANLON
Leslie Scanlon is
a journalist and
former religion
writer for the
Courier-Journal
in Louisville, Kentucky. Her work
has appeared
in The Christian
Century, the
Washington Post,
and many other
publications.
FATHER PAUL
Henson, O.Carm.
(center right)
with some of
the men who
entered his
community in
recent years.
OR THOSE WHO THINK the road to religious vocation is a straight
path, meet Father Paul Henson, O.Carm. Henson’s route to the priest-
hood wandered in and out of seminary, into a career as a teacher,
through a season in his 20s of considering marriage and family—but he kept hear-
ing a call to religious life.
Finally, at age 30, he answered—and his ministry since as a Carmelite priest
has taken him to Mexico and Peru and into education administration as principal
of Crespi Carmelite High School in Encino, California. He’s now a vocation director for the Carmelites, serving the Province of the Most Pure Heart of Mary in
Darien, Illinois, living in a priory next to a Carmelite high school in Tucson, and
PRIESTS
