Emmanuel Charles McCarthy

Emmanuel Charles McCarthy is a priest of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, an Eastern Catholic church in communion with the Holy See. He has been a Catholic priest since he was ordained on 9 August 1981, in Damascus, Syria. He has served as spiritual director and rector of St. Gregory the Theologian Melkite Catholic Seminary in Newton, Massachusetts, and is now a retreat director.

McCarthy graduated from the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana in 1962, and lectured there becoming the founder and the original director of the Program for the Study and Practice of Nonviolent Conflict Resolution at the University. He left the Notre Dame in 1969, resigning in protest. He is also co-founder, along with Dorothy Day, Gordon Zahn and others of Pax Christi USA. He has directed retreats and spoken throughout the world on the issue of the relationship of faith and violence, and the Nonviolent Jesus and His Way of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies.

In 1983 he began The Annual Forty Day Fast for the Truth of Gospel Nonviolence, (1 July to 9 August), whose purpose is to pray to the Lord in the name of Jesus to bestow on the Churches of Christianity whatever extraordinary graces are needed so that they, individually and collectively, will turn from justifying violence and enmity in the name of Jesus and begin to teach about violence and enmity what Jesus taught about violence and enmity. In 1990 he initiated the July 16 Twenty-Four Hours Day of Prayer for Forgiveness and Protection with Our Lady of Mount Carmel at Trinity Site in the New Mexico desert. July 16 is the feast day of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, as well as, the day in 1945 when the first atomic bomb was detonated at Trinity Site.

He was the keynote speaker at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, for the 25th anniversary memorial of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. at that spot. He has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and is author of several books. He has written popular articles and theological essays on the subject of violence, religion and the nonviolent love of friends and enemies that Jesus taught. His CD/DVD series, Behold the Lamb, is a presentation on the matter of the nonviolent Jesus and his way of nonviolent love of friends and enemies.