Dr. Warren H. Carroll, founder of Christendom College, was buried on the College’s Front Royal, Va., campus on July 26, following his funeral Mass at All Saints Parish of Manassas, Va. Carroll, a renowned author and teacher of history, died in his home after receiving last rites on July 17.
Over 1,500 family, friends, and alumni of Christendom College attended the funeral Mass, celebrated by All Saints Pastor Rev. Robert C. Cilinski. Fourteen priests joined in concelebrating the Mass, many of whom were alumni of the College.
“Death no longer has the last word, God does,” Rev. Cilinski said during his homily. “When Dr. Carroll met Christ through his wife Anne—and one year into their marriage had his conversion—he made his ‘yes’ and he could not contain this good news.”
Rev. Cilinski quoted Blessed Pope John Paul II, the pontiff who told Carroll that Christendom was doing a great work for the Church: “Those of us who know Christ cannot keep him to ourselves. We must proclaim him.”
Concluding he said, “Warren, you have been a man on a mission—with the message of hope. You do not belong to death, you belong to Christ, and so do we.”
After the Mass, College President Dr. Timothy O’Donnell delivered Carroll’s eulogy.
“As a founder, a teacher, and an author, he was also—in the full sense of the word—a father to the thousands of graduates, students, and those who read his books,” O’Donnell said. “His love for our Lord, the Blessed Mother, and the Church affected everything he did after his conversion. The Faith, our Catholic Faith, was the deepest thing in him.”
“Warren had the gift of always seeing things in a radiant light—extolling the heroic in the struggles of good against evil, light against darkness, truth against falsehood, the knight battling the dragon,” O’Donnell said. “Some thought this rather naïve and antiquated, rejecting such categories; preferring the shadowlands of uncertainty and the false comfort of a timid agnosticism, so characteristic of our modern era. But Warren was a true visionary and would have none of this.”
O’Donnell noted that Carroll died on July 17, the feast of the Martyrs of Compiégne, the Carmelite nuns whom Carroll had written about in his work The Guillotine and the Cross.
“I somehow would have to believe that when this pilgrim warrior entered eternity, the 18 women of that heavenly Carmel took a special interest in him,” O’Donnell said.
Following the funeral ceremonies, a crowd of over 500 gathered at Christendom’s Front Royal campus for the Rite of Christian Burial. A procession led Carroll’s body to the burial site behind Regina Coeli Hall, which overlooks a beautiful view of the Shenandoah River. Carroll’s wife, Anne, with family and friends followed in the procession along with a bagpiper who played “The Minstral Boy,” a traditional Irish song.
The homily and eulogy from the funeral Mass, as well a video of the burial will be available for downloaded at Christendom on iTunes U. Pictures from both the funeral and the burial are available here.
