PRIESTS
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.
“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.
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OR THOSE WHO THINK the road to religious vocation is a straight path, meet Father Paul Henson, O.Carm. Henson’s route to the priesthood 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 hearing 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
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