Biography
Lawrence Brandt was born in Charleston, West Virginia; he has two sisters. He would pretend to celebrate the Mass as a child, using a small workbench as an altar, Necco Wafers as hosts, and one of his father’s architectural manuals as the lectionary. The family later moved to Pennsylvania, where Brandt attended St. John the Evangelist School in Girard. He then studied at the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio.
Brandt then traveled to Austria to study at the University of Innsbruck, from where he obtained his doctorate in philosophy in 1966. He also completed his theological studies at the Pontifical North American College and Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He was there ordained to the priesthood on December 19, 1969, in St. Peter's Basilica.
| Styles of Lawrence Brandt |
|
|---|---|
| Reference style | The Most Reverend |
| Spoken style | Your Excellency |
| Religious style | Monsignor |
| Posthumous style | none |
Brandt then attended the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, and successively served in the nunciatures to Madagascar, Germany, Ecuador, and Algeria from 1973 to 1981, when he was forced to leave the Vatican's diplomatic service for family reasons. Upon his return to the United States, Brandt was incardinated into the Diocese of Erie, where he served as vice-chancellor and chaplain of Gannondale Residential Center for Girls before returning to Rome to obtain his doctorate in canon law from the Pontifical Lateran University in 1983 which was audited by then Fr Tarcisio Bertone, SDB. A graduate of the Universities of Paris and of Florence as well, he was named Honorary Prelate of His Holiness in 1991 and pastor of St. Hedwig Church in Erie in 1998.
Read more about this topic: Lawrence Eugene Brandt
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West [Cicily Isabel Fairfield] (1892–1983)
“The death of Irving, which at any other time would have attracted universal attention, having occurred while these things were transpiring, went almost unobserved. I shall have to read of it in the biography of authors.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)