Providence College recently issued the following announcement.
Twenty five years after his death on April 12, 1997, Rev. Edward Paul Doyle, O.P. ’34, fondly known as the Dominican Liberator, continues to inspire those who learn about him.
Father Doyle served a professor of theology at multiple universities, including Providence College, a research fellow at Yale Divinity School, a college chaplain, a hospital chaplain, and a priest in parochial ministry, but he is most remembered for his role as an army chaplain in World War II. The infantry division to which he was assigned liberated the Nazi concentration camp at Nordhausen, Germany. His message about trust in God’s goodness and the importance of Holocaust remembrance endures in the special collection of documents he donated to PC.
Born in 1907, Father Doyle grew up in Fall River, Mass., with his parents and eight siblings. He joined the Order of Preachers in 1932, earned a bachelor’s degree from PC in 1934, and was ordained to the priesthood on May 17, 1939. He received a master’s degree from The Catholic University of America in 1941 and then taught theology at PC until 1954, with the exception of a three-year interruption for military service. In the wake of Pearl Harbor, Father Doyle applied for duty overseas, and in 1943 he was called to be a major in the chaplaincy corps with the 104th Infantry Division, also called the Timberwolves.
At a special event to honor the life of Father Doyle held during the college’s centennial celebrations in 2017, College President Rev. Brian J. Shanley, O.P. ’80 recalled his impression of the Dominican Liberator, who was an elderly priest when Father Shanley joined the order.
“We never called him Father Doyle. We just called him Major Doyle,” Father Shanley said. “He was always Major Doyle. That military period of his life was so formative for him.”
Original source can be found here.
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