Patrick Madrid is a best-selling author of a dozen books, including Search and Rescue, Does the Bible Really Say That? and the acclaimed Surprised By Truth series. He is the publisher of Envoy magazine and director of the Envoy Institute at Belmont Abbey College. His total book sales, including foreign-language editions, have exceeded 775,000 copies.
Over the past 24 years, he has published numerous popular articles on Scripture, Church history, patristics, apologetics, and evangelization in various Catholic and Protestant periodicals, and he has contributed scholarly articles on apologetics in the New Catholic Encyclopedia.
Active in apologetics since 1987, Patrick worked at Catholic Answers for eight years (from January 1988 to January 1996), where he served as vice president and helped launch that apostolate’s flagship magazine, This Rock, in January of 1990. During his time at Catholic Answers, he co-authored the bookletPillar of Fire, Pillar of Truth, millions of copies of which have been printed (in English, Spanish, Tagalog, and other languages) and distributed around the world.
Patrick is a life-long Catholic, not a convert. By God’s grace, he was raised in the Catholic Faith and has been a practicing Catholic his entire life. Growing up in Southern California, he attended grammar school at the Mission San Juan Capistrano parish school, where for several years he served as an altar boy for the parish’s dailyTraditional Latin Mass in the famed Serra Chapel. Ever since his boyhood, Patrick has loved the Traditional Latin Mass.
Patrick earned a bachelor of science degree in business from the University of Phoenix, as well as a B.Phil. in philosophy and an M.A. in theology from the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio. (The theme of his master’s thesis was: “Yves Congar’s Concept of the Material Sufficiency of Scripture and the Role of Tradition as an Ecumenical Solution to the Problem of Sola Scriptura.”) He is currently enrolled in the licentiate of sacred theology (S.T.L.) program at the University of Dayton’s International Marian Research Institute(affiliated with the Pontifical Theology Faculty Marianum in Rome), where he plans to subsequently obtain a doctorate in sacred theology (S.T.D.).
He is an adjunct professor of theology at Franciscan University of Steubenville and a research fellow of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Studies.
Patrick hosted the EWTN television series: “Pope Fiction,” “Search & Rescue,” and “Where Is That In the Bible?” He also hosts the Thursday edition of EWTN Radio’s “Open Line” broadcast, heard coast-to-coast on approximately 175 AM & FM stations across the United States (listen to past shows here), as well as on shortwave and on Sirius Satellite Radio (Thursdays from 3:00 p.m. — 5:00 p.m. ET). He is a regular guest and occasional fill-in host on the “Catholic Answers Live” radio program and Sirius Radio’s “The Catholic Channel.”
A member of the board of trustees of the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley, California, Patrick is an emeritus member of the board of directors of St. Gabriel Catholic Radio, in Columbus, Ohio, and on the board of advisors for Catholics United for the Faith, The Coming Home Network, Immaculate Heart Radio Network, Catholic Scripture Study International, and Real Men Pray the Rosary. He authored all the original website content for CatholicsComeHome.org, where he also serves as a theological advisor. He was a founding board member of the Catholic Marketing Network.
Patrick has conducted over a thousand teaching seminars on Catholic themes, in English and Spanish, at conferences, parishes, and universities across North America, as well as throughout Europe, and in Latin America, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. He is a regular presenter at Franciscan University of Steubenville’s annual “Defending the Faith” and The Coming Home Network’s “Deep in History” summer conferences and has been the featured speaker at over two dozen Legatus events across the country. He is also a veteran of a dozen formal, public debates with Protestant ministers, Mormon leaders, and other non-Catholic spokesmen.
Cardinal Edward Egan, the Archbishop Emeritus of New York, commented publicly on the effectiveness of Patrick’s approach to apologetics saying, “How do you bring a friend or relative back into the Church? First, you pray. Then, you follow Patrick Madrid’s advice in [his book] Search and Rescue.”
Patrick and his wife Nancy have been married for 30 years and have been blessed with 11 children and 11 grandchildren. Their most important goal as a couple is to hear the Lord Jesus say to them and their children one day, “Well done, good and faithful servants; you have been faithful over a little . . . now enter into the joy of your Master” (Matt. 25:21).
Bryan Murdaugh
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