Father Joseph Carola, S.J., hails from Texas.  In 1980 he entered the New Orleans Province of the Society of Jesus at Grand Coteau, LA, and in 1980 was ordained to the priesthood. In 2001 at Rome’s Patristic Institute Augustinianum, he completed a doctorate in theology and patristic sciences and in 2007, at the Church of the Gesù in Rome, he took his final vows in the Jesuit Order.  He is Ordinarius in the theology faculty at the Pontifical Gregorian University and director of the department of patristic theology and the tradition of the Fathers.  Beginning in 2010, he served one five-year term as a consultor of the Congregation for Divine Worship and Sacraments.  His publications include the monograph Augustine of Hippo: The Role of the Laity in Ecclesial FReconciliation, a study of non-Christians in patristic theology in Catholic Engagement with World Religions, four volumes of meditations on the priesthood entitled Conformed to Christ Crucified, the monograph Engaging the Church Fathers in Nineteenth-Century Catholicism: The Patristic Legacy of the Scuola Romana, and various contributions to the Augustinus-Lexikon among other studies, articles, and reviews.  His historical novel about nineteenth-century Jesuits at the Roman College entitled Dragons: A Roman Requiem is due to be published in 2026.