Father Raymond J. de Souza was ordained a Catholic priest on 20 July 2002 for the Archdiocese of Kingston, Ontario. He currently serves as Chaplain at Newman House (since 2004), the Roman Catholic chaplaincy at Queen’s University. He is the Pastor of Sacred Heart of Mary Parish (since 2006) on Wolfe Island – the largest of the Thousand Islands – where he lives.
Father de Souza teaches at Queen’s in the Faculty of Education and the Queen’s Economics Department. He has served ten seasons as chaplain for the Queen’s Golden Gales football team, including the 2009 Vanier Cup championship season.
Described by papal biographer George Weigel as “Canada’s finest Catholic commentator,” Father de Souza is a longstanding weekly columnist for the National Post, and contributes a weekly column to The Catholic Register, Canada’s largest Catholic newspaper. He is the editor-in-chief of Convivium, a new magazine he launched in October 2011, examining the role of faith in our common life.
He is the Chaplain for the Saint Thomas More Society, an informal association of Catholic parliamentarians in Ottawa. He is a Senior Fellow for Cardus, Canada’s leading Christian think tank. In November 2011, he was appointed a consultant to the Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty – the lead committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in defense of religious liberty at home and abroad, and has consulted with the new Canadian Office of Religious Freedom established in 2013 in the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development. In frequent contact with Canada’s Jewish community, he has served on the board of directors of the national Jewish advocacy agencies since 2005.
Father de Souza completed an undergraduate degree in Economics and Political Studies (BA Hons. 1993) and a graduate degree in public policy (MPA 1994) at Queen’s University. He studied development economics (MPhil 1995) at the University of Cambridge, England. His seminary formation was completed at St. Philip’s Seminary in Toronto (BA Hons. in Catholic Philosophy 1998) and the Pontifical North American College in Rome (STB, Pontifical Gregorian University 2001; STL Pontifical University of the Holy Cross 2003).