About Patrick

“I am Patrick, a sinner, most uncultivated and least of all the faithful and despised in the eyes of many.” * 

Patrick Madrid

PATRICK MADRID is the author of numerous books and hosts the daily “Patrick Madrid Show” on Relevant Radio, broadcast nationally on 225 AM & FM stations and globally on the Relevant Radio app. His show airs live Monday through Friday (8:00-11:00 am CT) and re-airs as an encore each evening.

He is active on Twitter and on his Telegram channel.

Patrick was raised Catholic and has been a practicing Catholic his entire life. Growing up in Southern California, he was baptized at Saint Mary of the Assumption Catholic Church in Whittier and, for several years, attended and graduated from the Mission San Juan Capistrano parish grammar school. He was an altar server for several years at the Mission’s daily Traditional Latin Mass in its historic Serra Chapel.

Work at Catholic Answers

From 1988 to 1996, Patrick worked at Catholic Answers, where he eventually was named vice president. Among his various duties, he wrote regular articles for the apostolate’s newsletter Catholic Answers (discontinued in 1989) and was a contributing editor for This Rock Magazine, which replaced the newsletter in January, 1990.

(Read Patrick’s behind-the-scenes account of how he wound up working at Catholic Answers.)

The entire time he worked at Catholic Answers (and ever since then), Patrick maintained a vigorous public speaking schedule, presenting hundreds of seminars and fielding tens of thousands of questions on Catholic themes, in English and Spanish, at parishes and conferences across the US and abroad.

In preparation for Pope John Paul II’s visit to Denver for World Youth Day in 1993, Patrick co-authored the booklet Pillar of Fire, Pillar of Truth, millions of copies of which have been distributed in English, Spanish, Tagalog, Arabic, and other languages. He also supervised the translation, printing, and distribution of hundreds of thousands of copies of Pillar of Fire in the Philippines during the pope’s 1995 World Youth Day visit to Manila.

His 2012 book Envoy for Christ: 25 Years as a Catholic Apologist serves as a memoir of his work up to that point. In it he “provides insights into how his own thinking as a Catholic, an apologist, and a teacher of the Faith deepened and matured over the years. Replete with many engaging and sometimes humorous ‘man on the street’ observations, this book is a legacy of [his] far-reaching public efforts to explain, share, and defend Christianity and the Catholic Faith” (from the cover).

In September 1994, his first book, Surprised by Truth, was published. Encouraged by the book’s success, by January 1996, after eight years with the apostolate, he decided to leave Catholic Answers and embarked on a career as an author, public speaker, book and magazine publisher, university professor, and radio host.

Books

Patrick authored or edited 26 books including, Why Be Catholic? (Penguin Random House) and Life Lessons: 50 Things I Learned in My First 50 Years (Ignatius Press) and has contributed chapters, introductions, and forewords to many other books. His total book sales exceed a million copies worldwide, including foreign-language editions.

Patrick has also published numerous popular articles on biblical apologetics, Church history, and patristics in various Catholic and Protestant periodicals, and he contributed scholarly articles on apologetics to the New Catholic Encyclopedia.

Public Speaking

Since the late 1980s, Patrick has conducted countless public speaking events, in English and Spanish, at conferences, parishes, and universities across the US and Canada, as well as throughout Europe, and in Latin America and Asia. For 25 years, he was a speaker at Franciscan University of Steubenville’s annual “Defending the Faith” Conference.

For many years, Patrick has been a featured speaker at Legatus events around the country. He is also a veteran of a dozen formal, public debates with Protestant ministers (Calvinist, Lutheran, Baptist, non-denominational), Mormon leaders, and other non-Catholic ministers.

“For a quarter of a century, Patrick Madrid has been an outstanding apostle of the New Evangelization. . . . His clear exposition of the Catholic Faith and powerful witness of our doctrines and traditions have made a huge impact on Catholics and non-Catholics alike.”
— Cardinal Seán Patrick O’Malley, Archbishop of Boston (2012)

“How do you bring a friend or relative back into the Church? First, you pray. Then, you follow Patrick Madrid’s advice in [his book] Search and Rescue.”
— Cardinal Edward Egan, former Archbishop of New York (2001)

After 35 years of continuous speaking events across the country and around the world, Patrick officially retired from public speaking at the end of 2022 and is no longer accepting speaking invitations.

Envoy Institute

In 1996, Patrick established Envoy Communications (now, the Envoy Institute, an Ohio 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation), and launched its full-color, flagship monthly journal Envoy Magazine, which he published from 1996 to 2011. In its first several years of publication, Envoy won numerous awards from the Catholic Press Association, including first place in the “Magazine of the Year” category.

As publisher and editor-in-chief, Patrick and his team grew Envoy’s paid circulation to approximately 15,000 subscribers before discontinuing the publication in 2011 when the Envoy Institute lost its institutional funding source. Here’s a complete digital version of an issue of Envoy.

The Envoy Institute continues to operate, conducting the occasional Catholic Apologetics Academy and Catholic Apologetics Summer Camp events, as well as Patrick’s ongoing speaking events, conferences, pilgrimages, and related projects.

Television & Radio

Beginning in the mid 1990s, Patrick wrote and hosted several EWTN television series, including “Pope Fiction,” “Search & Rescue,” and “Where Is That in the Bible?” These series aired on the network for many years in the US and internationally.

Over the next decade, he appeared regularly on EWTN programs such as “The Journey Home” with Marcus Grodi, “EWTN Live,” “Bookmark,” and the “Mother Angelica Live” show.

In 2000, Patrick was a member of the network’s extensive live television team covering Pope John Paul II’s historic visit to the Holy Land. He provided on-air commentary on the visit as well as historical and biblical explanations of the papacy.

In 2006, EWTN invited Patrick to host the Thursday edition of its “Open Line” radio show, which he did for the next six years. Focusing primarily on apologetics, he fielded countless live questions from callers, often from non-Catholics, including atheists.

In 2012, the Sacramento-based Immaculate Heart Radio Network hired Patrick to host a new one-hour afternoon call-in apologetics show which he named “Right Here, Right Now.” The show was broadcast daily on hundreds of stations nationally, as well as on SiriusXM Satellite Radio and globally via shortwave. 

Given the success of this show in garnering a large listening audience and becoming the highest-rated show in Catholic radio, two years later, he moved from afternoons to his current “Patrick Madrid Show” three-hour morning time slot (Monday through Friday, 9-11 am CT). This move coincided with Immaculate Heart Radio (now Relevant Radio) acquiring the powerful 93-KHJ am legacy station in Los Angeles which blankets the “Patrick Madrid Show” across Southern California. 

His show airs daily on 225 stations nationally, in most major metro markets, including NYC, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Chicago, the Twin Cities, Boston, Atlanta, Detroit, Houston, Dallas, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C., Denver, Seattle, and Miami. “The Patrick Madrid Show” is also available globally on the popular Relevant Radio app.

Selections of Patrick’s on-air commentary on a wide variety of issues are available on the show’s YouTube channel.

Education and Teaching

Patrick earned a bachelor of science degree in business from the University of Phoenix, as well as a B.Phil. in philosophy and an M.A. with honors in dogmatic theology from the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio. He also did graduate studies in theology in the University of Dallas IRPS program.

His master’s thesis topic was: “Yves Congar’s Concept of the Material Sufficiency of Scripture and the Role of Tradition as an Ecumenical Solution to the Problem of Sola Scriptura.” His thesis director was the PCJ’s academic dean, the late Deacon Michael Ross, Ph.D.

Patrick taught courses in apologetics and sacraments for several semesters as an adjunct professor in the theology department at Franciscan University of Steubenville. From 2012-2022, he taught apologetics at Holy Apostles College and Seminary in Cromwell, Connecticut. He has also served as an adjunct professor of apologetics at Saint Patrick’s Seminary and University in Menlo Park, California. He is a fellow at the St. Paul Center for Biblical Studies.

Service

A former member of the board of trustees of the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley, California, as of 2022, Patrick serves on the board of trustees of the Pontifical College Josephinum. He has also served as a theological adviser for several national organizations, including the Coming Home Network and Catholics Come Home and was a founding board member of the Catholic Marketing Network in 1995.

He is a knight of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem.

Christendom College bestowed its Pro Deo et Patria award upon Patrick when he delivered the commencement address to the graduating class of 2020. 

Family

Patrick and his wife Nancy were married on February 7th, 1981.  God has blessed them with 11 children and 29 grandchildren (so far). Their most important goal as a couple is to hear the Lord Jesus say to them one day, “Well done, good and faithful servants; you have been faithful over a little . . . now enter into the joy of your Master” (Matt. 25:21).

* St. Patrick of Ireland