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 Fr.
Robert Francis Christian, OP
I was born and raised in San Francisco. Although I grew up in a parish adjoining St. Dominic’s, I
had no contact with Dominicans. I attended a Jesuit high school and a Jesuit university.
However, while
spending my junior year of college in Florence, Italy, I lived in a Dominican parish, and up the
hill in Fiesole was a Dominican novitiate. During that year I realized that God was calling me to
priesthood in a contemplative and active religious order that prays the choral office and shares
all things—even decisions—in common. So it was from Florence that I wrote to the vocation director
in California, and after graduation I entered the novitiate in Oakland.
After
ordination, my first ministry was teaching and campus ministry at Dominican College (now Dominican
University) in San Rafael. In 1979 I was given permission to study for a doctorate, and I left for
the Dominican pontifical university, the Angelicum, in Rome, little suspecting that I would spend
most of my life there.
I finished my doctorate in dogmatic theology in 1984 and was
sent first to Riverside, and then to Seattle, to work in campus ministry. I was only one year in
Seattle when the Master of the Order reassigned me to Rome. From 1985 until 1997, with the
exception of a sabbatical, I taught at the Angelicum. Then I returned to the Province as socius
and vicar provincial for two years. I went back to Rome in 1999, and indications are that I shall
be in Rome for the foreseeable future.
I have served
in many administrative capacities both at the university and in the Dominican community in
addition to my academic duties, and I have had the privilege of doing some small jobs at the
Vatican. Teaching students from every corner of the world (98 countries are represented in the
Angelicum student body) has been enriching, and the combination of duty and frequent flier miles
have made it possible for me, in turn, to visit many parts of the world.
Nevertheless I
remain affiliated to the Western Dominican Province and am happy to return for at least a brief
period of ministry in the province, among the brethren, every year.
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