Fr. Paul Pearson, C.C. Biography 

Fr. Paul was born of Mennonite and Southern Baptist parents in Illinois, the oldest of many siblings.  His time during high school was filled with competing on the debate team and playing the cello.  He studied Intellectual History at Cornell College in Iowa, where he was baptized and received into the Church in his final year, before coming to Toronto for graduate work in Medieval Studies.  At the University of Toronto's Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, he received his M.A., Licentiate, and Ph.D.  He has spent most of his life teaching at Saint Philip's Seminary, beginning as a layman at the seminary's inception in 1984.  A year after beginning to teach at the Seminary, much to the surprise of his friends and family (and him, too), he entered the community in 1985 and was ordained a priest in 1989.  Since 1990, he has served as Dean of the Seminary, teaching courses in Fundamental Theology, Human Nature, and Philosophy of God in the Philosophy Division as well as many courses on Saint Thomas's Summa theologiae in the Theology Division.  His seminar courses in the seminary on Dante's Divine Comedy gave rise to a three-volume series of books called Spiritual Direction from Dante: Avoiding the Inferno, Ascending Mount Purgatory, and Yearning for Paradise.  He was elected Provost (or “The Father”) of the Toronto Oratory in June 2020 and is now Rector of Saint Philip's Seminary.