Russell Shaw was born May 19, 1935, in Washington, D.C. He grew up uneventfully in Washington, where he attended public and parochial school, Gonzaga High School, and Georgetown University. He received a B.A., summa cum laude, from Georgetown in 1956 and an M.A. in English literature, also from Georgetown, in 1960. He has published thousands of articles, columns, and reviews in U.S. and other periodicals, among them The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, L’Osservatore Romano, America, Crisis, Catholic World Report, The National Catholic Reporter, and many others. He is a contributing editor of Our Sunday Visitor national Catholic weekly and American correspondent of Palabra, a monthly newsmagazine published in Madrid. Shaw writes a biweekly column appearing on the Catholic Exchange website and in several Catholic newspapers and a monthly column for the Inside Catholic website. He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Americana, the New Catholic Encyclopedia, and the Catholic Social Sciences Encyclopedia. From 1998 to 2005 he was editor of the documentary publication The Pope Speaks.

He is a recipient of the Frederic Ozanam Award of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists and the Pro Vita Award of the Diocese of Brooklyn, is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, the Knights of Columbus, the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars, and other groups, and is listed in Who’s Who in America.