Christendom College Founder Warren Carroll Dies

FRONT ROYAL, Va. — Warren H. Carroll, the founder and first president of Christendom College, died at home July 17 at the age of 79.

He had received the last rites the prior week, and a priest brought him holy Communion the day before he died peacefully in his sleep.

“He was a great man,” said Timothy O’Donnell, current president of Christendom. “He was a convert. In 1968, the time of great chaos, when many were leaving the Church, he came in. He had a deep love for Our Lord and our Blessed Mother and the Church. That’s something that was communicated in everything he did after his conversion.”

O’Donnell sees Carroll as among those unsung heroes who stood in the breech when people started leaving after Humanae Vitae came out.

With another papal document, Carroll was a pioneer Catholic educator with the perspective of a visionary.

“The example of Christendom as one of the few early colleges to really embrace the message of Ex Corde Ecclesiae even before it was issued,” said Patrick Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society, “has given rise to a whole series of new Catholic colleges modeled after Christendom — schools that have embraced a strong Catholic identity in reaction to the decline of Catholic identity elsewhere.”...