Father Roger J. Landry is a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts.
He’s a native of Lowell, Massachusetts, and honored to be the son of Roger and Midge Landry, the twin brother of Scot, the big brother of Greg and Colleen (McDermott), a proud uncle of 7 and Godfather of 11. He grew up at St. Michael’s Parish where he received his sacraments, served at the altar and worked at the rectory.
He attended Lowell High School where he was the valedictorian of the Class of 1988 and three-year captain and top singles player for the Lowell High Tennis Team.
He is a member of the 1992 class of Harvard College, where he graduated with a biology degree. During his university studies, he worked for four years at Massachusetts General Hospital researching the circadian neuroendocrine control of metabolism and immunology in the laboratory of Anthony Cincotta, Ph.D.
During his years at Harvard, after the magazine he co-founded — Peninsula — started to receive national attention as a result of controversies generated by it, Father Landry received political training from Virginia’s Leadership Institute, which he put to use first for the campaign of Congressman Frank R. Wolf from Virginia and then as the executive director of the Conservative Leadership Political Action Committee, a small PAC that focused on identifying, training and placing young people onto hotly contested congressional and senatorial campaigns in which the pro-life cause was at issue.
After being accepted by Bishop Sean O’Malley, OFM Cap., as a seminarian of the Diocese of Fall River on August 4, 1993, he did his philosophical preparations for the priesthood at Mt. St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, MD (1993-1994) and St. Philip’s Seminary in Toronto (1994-1995). For his theology studies, Bishop O’Malley sent him to the North American College in the Vatican, where he studied at the Angelicum (1995-1996), the Gregorian (1996-1998) and Lateran Universities (1998-2000).
Father Landry was one of the six seminarians profiled in the 1997 book The New Men: Inside the Vatican’s Elite School for Priests by Brian Murphy.
He was ordained a deacon by Cardinal Edmund Szoka at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican on October 8, 1998 and a priest by Bishop O’Malley at St. Mary of the Assumption Cathedral in Fall River on June 26, 1999. After ordination, he returned to Rome to complete advanced degrees in moral theology — specializing in marriage, family and sexuality issues, at the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family — and bioethics (a joint program between the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family and the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart Medical School). While in Rome, he was for several years an official Vatican guide to the necropolis under St. Peter’s Basilica (the Vatican Scavi where St. Peter’s tomb was discovered in 1941), did a multipart series for Vatican radio on the principal Churches of Rome and has led thousands of pilgrims to the other major Christian monuments in the city.
Father Landry served as parochial vicar of SS. Peter and Paul Parish in Fall River (summer of 1999), parochial vicar at Espirito Santo Parish in Fall River (2000-2003), chaplain at Bishop Connolly High School in Fall River (2000-2003) and parochial vicar at St. Francis Xavier Parish in Hyannis (2003-2005).
In June 2005, Bishop George Coleman named him administrator, then pastor, of St. Anthony of Padua Parish in New Bedford and executive editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River. In 2012, Bishop Coleman named him to be the founding pastor of the new parish of St. Bernadette in Fall River, formed out of the merger of Notre Dame and Immaculate Conception Parishes.
In March 2015, at the request of Archbishop Bernardito Auza, Apostolic Nuncio and Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations in New York, he was assigned by Bishop Edgar da Cunha to serve as Attaché, Director of Special Events, Director of the Internship Program and communication specialist at the Holy See’s Permanent Observer Mission, through February 2022. He likewise served as Executive Director of the Path to Peace Foundation, in service of the Holy See Mission, during his tenure.
In August 2022, with the permission of Bishop da Cunha, he was appointed by Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York as Catholic Chaplain to Columbia University and to the newly founded Thomas Merton Institute for Catholic Life at Columbia.
On July 23, 2024, he was appointed by the Vatican’s Dicastery for Evangelization the National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in the United States.
Throughout his priesthood, Father Landry has regularly led pilgrimages of parishioners, seminarians, religious, journalists and businessmen and women, to Rome, the Holy Land, European sanctuaries and other sacred destinations. He has also given many retreats and workshops to bishops, priests, deacons, seminarians, women religious, university students, confirmation classes, lay faithful and parishes.
He writes for various Catholic publications, including a monthly editorial for The Anchor and frequent articles for The National Catholic Register. He has appeared frequently on various Catholic radio programs, including The Good Catholic Life, The Drew Mariani Program, Catholic Answers Live and others. He was an on-site commentator on Raymond Arroyo’s Conclave Crew for EWTN’s coverage of the conclave that elected Pope Francis, where he also appeared each day on the BBC and wrote an 18-part daily column for The New Bedford Standard Times. In 2023, he served as onsite commentator for EWTN’s coverage of the funeral of Pope Benedict XVI.
He gives weekly homilies on the Gospel for the popular podcast Conversations with Consequences of the Catholic Association, which airs on EWTN radio.
His first book, Plan of Life: Habits to Help You Grow Closer to God was published on February 1, 2018 by Pauline Books and Media.
In 2012, he was named the national chaplain of Catholic Voices USA. He was appointed in 2015 a Papal Missionary of Mercy, a mandate that was extended indefinitely by Pope Francis after the conclusion of the Jubilee of Mercy. He was appointed in 2021 the ecclesiastical assistant of Aid to the Church in Need USA by the Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy. In 2017 he became the founding chaplain to the New York City Chapter of the Leonine Forum and since 2021 has served as a Member of the Board of the Shrine of Our Lady of the Martyrs in Auriesville, New York. In 2021, at the request of Bishop da Cunha, he was commissioned by the US Bishops a National Eucharistic Preacher for the Bishops’ 2022-24 Eucharistic Revitalization efforts and from May to July 2024, in anticipation of the first National Eucharistic Congress in the United States since 1941, he helped lead the Seton Route of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage.
In 2004, with Fr. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, he founded the Donum Vitae Center for Bioethics, in order to make Catholic bioethical teaching accessible to non-specialists.
He speaks, to various degrees of fluency and with an inimitable New England accent, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian and Latin, and can read some German and Biblical Hebrew and Greek.
Biographical and Autobiographical Articles
- Father Landry Takes the Helm of The Anchor, The Anchor, July 8, 2005. (pdf)
- Striving to Live in Truth, USA Today, June 11, 2002 (link to article)
- Striving to Live in Truth, USA Today, June 11, 2002. (pdf)
- The Life of a Priest, USA Today Photoessay, June 11, 2002. (pdf)
- The Luckiest Man in the Universe, The National Catholic Register, November 2, 2003. (pdf)
- One Good Priest Can Make a Difference, Columbia Magazine, January 2004. (pdf)
- God’s Call — One Man’s Response, Vocation.com, October 31, 2004
- Father Landry Proud of Anchor’s Accomplishments As He Leaves The Helm, The Anchor, June 22, 2012. (pdf)
- Interview with Randy Hain for His Book, Joyful Witness: How To Be An Extraordinary Catholic, February 26, 2014.
- Abbreviated Interview with Randy Hain, “God Is Asking Something Heroic of Us, October 17, 2019.
- Article Upon Departure After Seven Years of Work for the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations, February 5, 2022
- Interview with Sr. Alicia Torres about the Eucharist, in preparation for service as a National Eucharistic Preacher, February 5, 2022