Saturday February 27, 2016

Past Conference Speakers

Tom Peterson

  After 25 years as an award-winning corporate advertising  
  executive, Tom Peterson’s life would radically change forever 
  while on a Catholic men’s retreat.  The story of how he changed
  his outlook on life is truly inspirational.
 
  Using his advertising abilities, he founded Catholics Come Home,
  Inc. an independent, non-profit Catholic apostolate that creates
  effective and compassionate media messages and broadcasts 
  them nationally and internationally.
 
The Catholics Come Home advertising campaign has helped bring thousands of people back to the Catholic Church.  He also founded Virtue Media, a pro-life apostolate. Both organizations have interactive websites and produce commercials that inform and inspire.

In 2011 Catholics Come Home evangomercialsTM were the first to air nationally on top TV networks like CBS and NBC, reaching 125 million viewers in every city across the U S. 
 
In January 2014, Catholics Come Home aired an evangomercial in all the major College Football bowl games, featuring legendary coach Lou Holtz, promoting the goal of heaven, and inviting viewers to come home to the Catholic faith. 
 
Recently, Tom began to host a new television series, premiering worldwide in prime time on EWTN on Thursday and Sunday nights.  The show is called Catholics Come Home, and inspires Catholics to share their faith. 

He also authored, "Catholic Come Home, God's Plan for Your Extraordinary Life" a series of moving stories and anecdotes.
 
He regularly speaks at Catholic conferences and pro-life events throughout the world, and has presented at the Vatican and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. He has also been featured on EWTN, Fox News, and Catholic radio stations throughout the country.
 
His talks are humorous, insightful, inspirational, and described as the most entertaining Catholic presentations of all-time on the subject of modern, mature evangelization.  He has a supercharged zeal for souls and provides tools for inspiring family, friends, co-workers, and Catholics in parishes in your area.

www.catholicscomehome.org 

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Father Wade Menezes, C.P.M. 

  Father Wade is a member of the Fathers of Mercy, a missionary
  preaching Religious Congregation based in Auburn, Kentucky. 
  He is also host of the EWTN segment series, The Crux of the 
  Matter.
 
  Father grew up on a dairy farm in a devoted Catholic family and
  went to college with an interest in journalism and freelanced with
  the Catholic Press. This began his increased interest in the
  Church. He says as a young man, many priests inquired with him
  about the possibility of a vocation as a priest. Fr. Wade says his journalism background led him to the Fathers of Mercy.
 
Ordained a priest during the Great Jubilee Year 2000, he received his Bachelor of Arts Degree in Catholic Thought from the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in Toronto, Canada and his dual Master of Arts and Master of Divinity Degrees in Theology from Holy Apostles Seminary in Cromwell, Connecticut. His secular college degrees are in journalism and communications.
 
Fr. Wade is currently the Assistant General and has served as Director of Vocations and Director of Seminarians for the Fathers of Mercy. Fr. Wade has also served as the Chaplain-in-Residence at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament of Our Lady of the Angels Monastery in Hanceville, Alabama. While at the Shrine, Fr. Wade was a daily Mass celebrant, homilist and confessor; he also gave spiritual conferences on specialized points of Catholic Christian doctrine to the many pilgrims who visit the Shrine. Both the Monastery and Shrine are affiliated with EWTN, the Eternal Word Television Network.
 
Fr. Wade has been a contributing writer for The National Catholic Register, Our Sunday Visitor, Catholic Twin Circle, Catholic Faith and Family, The Wanderer, Pastoral Life, The Catholic Faith, Lay Witness and Christian Ranchman publications. Several homiletic series of his have appeared in Homiletic and Pastoral Review, an international journal for Priests.
 
Fr. Wade has also been a guest on various episodes of EWTN’s “Mother Angelica Live” and “Life on the Rock” programs during which he discussed such topics as the sanctification of marriage and family life, vocations and the Sacred Liturgy. He has also hosted several televised series for EWTN, which have covered such topics as the necessity of the spiritual life, the Four Last Things, the Ten Commandments of Catholic Family Life, and the Gospel of Life vs. the Culture of Death.
 
His many theological and doctrinal presentations have been featured on EWTN Radio, Ave Maria Radio, Guadalupe Radio Network, Covenant Network Radio, Catholic Broadcasting Northwest, and Voice of Virtue International.

www.fathersofmercy.com 
   
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Joseph Pearce
 
  A native of England, Joseph Pearce is a Catholic author and a
  world-recognized biographer of modern Christian literary figures
  as various as GK Chesterton, economics, and Shakespeare.
 
  In his latest book, Race with the Devil — My Journey from Racial
  Hatred to Rational Love, Joseph Pearce switches from telling
  other men’s stories to telling his own.  Race with the Devil,
  chronicles his conversion from racial hatred to Catholicism.  His
  astounding story and his conversion from twisted conservative to
  true conservative is inspiring, moving and educational. He went
  from a working class Englishman with the minimum of formal education, a history of heavy drinking, active racism, neo-Nazism, social violence, and two jail terms ... to one of the foremost English biographers of his generation.  More than that, his journey from being a feisty Neo Nazi on a downward spiral to an articulate and radiant Christian witness shows that in his relentless race with the devil—the devil lost.  
 
He is an internationally acclaimed author of many books, published and translated into Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, Italian, Korean, Mandarin, Croatian and Polish.
 
He currently is the Director of the Center for Faith & Culture and as Writer-in-Residence at Aquinas College in Nashville, as well as the editor of St. Austin Review (www.staustinreview.com), an international review of Catholic culture, series editor of the Ignatius Critical Editions (www.ignatiuscriticaleditions.com),  and executive director of Catholic Courses (www.catholiccourses.com).

Pearce has hosted two 13-part television series about Shakespeare on EWTN, and has also written and presented documentaries on EWTN on the Catholicism of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.  He also has participated and lectured at a wide variety of international and literary events at major colleges and universities in the U.S., Canada, Britain, Europe, Africa and South America.  He is also a regular guest on national and international television and radio programs, and has served as consultant for film documentaries.

http://www.aquinascollege.edu/centers-for-excellence/faith-and-culture/about-joseph-pearce/

http://www.amazon.com/Joseph-Pearce/e/B001HMRMZG

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