A Short Bio of Fr. Louis Morrone, OP
Welcome to the new Prior Provincial of the Dominican Central Province of St. Albert the Great, U.S.A.
Fr. Louis Stephen Morrone was elected as the 13th Prior Provincial on Monday, June 5, 2023 for a four year term. Fr. Morrone was born in 1957 to Louis Gene Morrone and Barbara Jean Monack in Pueblo, Colorado. He attended Central H.S. and U.S.C. in Pueblo, Colorado, received a B.A. in nursing in 1982 from Loretto Heights College in Denver, Colorado and was selected to Who’s Who Among Students in American Colleges and Universities and received a leadership award from the president of the college. He earned a Master of Divinity (MDiv) in 1992 from the Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis, Missouri.
Fr. Morrone entered the Dominican novitiate in 1986 and was ordained in 1992. His first assignment was as Chaplain at Edgewood College and Edgewood High School in Madison, Wisconsin (1992-95). He then moved to Denver, Colorado to do campus ministry at Regis University (1995-97), to Chicago to become the Province’s Promoter of Vocations from 1997 to 2002, and then back to Denver to serve as Master of Novices from 2003 to 2011. In 2011 he became Socius (the Provincial’s primary assistant) and Provincial Syndic (Economic Administrator, 2011-2015), and was also a Member of the Board of Directors at Fenwick High School in Oak Park, Illinois (2011-19). From 2013-2019 he was a Member of Fenwick High School Governance and Nominating Committee and in 2019 was awarded Lifetime Trustee of Fenwick High School. In 2019 he became the Provincial Archivist, and most recently, in 2021, he has also been the Prior of St. Dominic Priory in Denver, Colorado.
For over 800 years the Order of Preachers has served the preaching mission of St. Dominic, extending it throughout the world. In 1806 four friars of the Province of England came to the United States to bolster the fledgling Church on the western frontier and creating the first house of preaching friars in the United States near Springfield, Kentucky, establishing at the same time the Province of St. Joseph. From this foundation, friars were sent eventually to major urban areas in the United States. The province grew in membership and ministry, extending from the Atlantic to the Rocky Mountains and from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. In 1930 Fr. Martin S. Gillet, OP, the Master of the Order, proposed the formation of a new province of friars to serve the central United States and this was accomplished in 1939, when the Province of St. Albert the Great (named after a newly canonized Dominican Saint) was established with headquarters in Chicago.
Today, the Dominican friars of the Province of St. Albert the Great continue the preaching mission of St. Dominic in a variety of apostolic ministries, placing emphasis upon the intellectual life, ministry to youth, and campus ministry. The foundations of Dominican life – community, prayer, study, and ministry – have given life to our preaching, and we look forward to Fr. Morrone helping us to expand this preaching mission in still more prophetic ways appropriate to the needs of our society today. Please pray for him and for our Province as we take this next step in our history.
(The photo is of Fr. James Marchionda, OP, former Provincial, signing the book of the newly professed brothers in 2022, with Fr. Louis Morrone, OP, the new Provincial in the background on the left and Fr. David Wright, OP, Novice Master, on the right.)
