Series S6 - Osobdný materiál (Personal papers) of Jozef Papin

Jozef Papin was born in the town of Parchovany in southeastern Slovakia on April 2, 1914. In 1931, at the age of seventeen, he entered the Jesuit order, undergoing his novitiate in the city of Ružomberok. After his initial formation, Jozef was sent to the Catholic University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands to study philosophy for two years, later continuing his studies in theology in Trnava and Bratislava. In 1940, he left the Jesuit order and, after completion of his theological studies, was ordained a priest in 1942. Initially, Fr. Papin served as a parochial vicar at various parishes in Slovakia. His pastoral career, however, would be a relatively short one. In 1946, Fr. Papin immigrated to Holland, where he entered onto the academic track, teaching Russian language and literature at one of his almae matres, the University of Nijmegen. Two years later, he immigrated to the United States. From 1948 to 1950, Fr. Papin taught philosophy and Biblical Greek at St.Procopius Seminary in Lisle, Illinois, before moving to DePaul University in Chicago, where he taught philosophy, theology, and contemporary politics. In 1953, he moved to the University of Notre Dame, where he taught political science, theology, and the history of Russian philosophy. In 1963, Fr. Papin took up a position at Villanova University in Philadelphia as professor of theology. There, he founded the Villanova Theology Institute, which hosted a series of annual symposia in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which became a major forum for
Catholic theological discourse in the United States. Throughout his academic career, Jozef Papin was a prolific author and wrote on a wide variety of topics, including Russian religious philosophy, and contemporary theology. He died on September 2, 1982 in Darby, Pennsylvania.