Recipient Biographies

Fr. Harry M. Byrne, OP is a Dominican friar in the Central Province of St. Albert the Great. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1978 and has served the Church and the people of God as a professor, a pastoral minister, and a preacher of the Good News. His academic and ministerial areas of interest include pastoral care and counseling, Christian spirituality and spiritual direction, Dominican spirituality, and psychology’s contribution to spiritual development.

Fr. Harry received the Master of Arts in Education (Guidance and Counseling) from the University of South Florida before entering the Order of Preachers. He holds the Master of Arts in Theology and the Master of Divinity from Aquinas Institute of Theology, and the Doctor of Ministry from Eden Theological Seminary.

Fr. Harry is Professor Emeritus at Aquinas Institute of Theology where he taught for 34 years. During his tenure at Aquinas Institute, Fr. Harry taught pastoral theology and counseling, ministerial formation, and spiritual direction. He served as the Director of the Certificate Program in Spiritual Direction for 16 years and was instrumental in launching Aquinas Institute’s online spiritual direction certificate program. Over three decades, Fr. Harry has been much loved and respected by his students and his lasting legacy at Aquinas Institute includes the training of an entire generation of spiritual directors.

Fr. Harry was an Assistant Professor at Saint. Louis University in the Department of Public Health and taught in the Graduate Program in Pastoral Health Care. He has lectured widely in academic and ministerial settings and written extensively on spirituality, pastoral care and counseling and spiritual direction. In addition to his academic ministry, Fr. Harry has extensive experience in pastoral care at parishes and educational institutions and is well-known and much appreciated as a wise spiritual director and pastoral counselor.

Fr. Jude Siciliano, OP is a Dominican friar in the Southern Province of St. Martin de Porres. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Fr. Jude entered the Dominican Order in the Eastern Province of St. Joseph and was ordained a priest in 1969. In 1979, he joined a group of friars from the Eastern and Central Provinces as a founding member of the Southern Province.

Fr. Jude has devoted his life to building the Order’s
preaching charism. He has been itinerant preacher
for over forty years, traveling throughout the country giving preaching workshops to ordained and lay preachers. Fr. Jude, working in partnership with Dominican women, gives dozens of retreats each year in parish settings and for priests, religious, deacons and laity. He was a professor of Homiletics at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California for fourteen years where he taught preaching to students from many different religious traditions.

In 1984, Fr. Jude founded the Preacher Exchange, an internationally recognized web-based resource dedicated to building up the ministry of preaching within the Christian community. With over 8,000 subscribers, it has a broad and diverse audience of preachers and laity, offered free of charge to all. Contributors to the Preacher Exchange are from every branch of the Dominican family – friars, nuns, sisters, and laity – with a variety of theological, pastoral, spiritual, and justice-oriented offerings that approach the ministry of preaching in a comprehensive and accessible way. For the last thirty-six years, Fr. Jude has faithfully written a weekly column entitled “First Impressions” to assist preachers in homily preparation.

Fr. Jude was a volunteer chaplain at San Quentin Prison and a member of North Carolina’s “People of Faith Against the Death Penalty.” He has held many service positions within the Southern Province including Student Master and Promoter of Preaching. Fr. Jude currently lives at the Southern Province Novitiate in Irving, Texas, where he serves as Prior of the community.