Thomas More College of Liberal Arts will honor the graduating Class of 2022 during Commencement ceremonies on Saturday, May 21. The College is pleased to welcome Rev. Marc Crilly as this year’s Baccalaureate Mass Celebrant and Mr. Francis Xavier Maier as the Commencement Speaker.
Rev. Marc Crilly is the Abbot of St. Benedict’s Abbey (Still River, Massachusetts). The third of eleven children, Fr. Marc was raised in a devout and lively family in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey. He began visiting the Abbey while he was a student at Indian Hills High School. His family were frequent visitors to Still River, bringing large groups of friends as well to experience the peace of the Benedictine life.
After finishing high school in 1976, he decided to join the community of St. Benedict, professing monastic vows on September 8th, 1981. While a monk of St. Benedict’s Abbey, Fr. Marc has been an assistant in the barn (during the years when the Abbey had 120 dairy cows). He has also been dedicated to the kitchen, as every Benedictine should be, but his chief contributions have been as Music Director, teacher, and Novice Master.
On May 15th, 2021, Fr. Marc was elected as the third Abbot of St. Benedict’s Abbey. He succeeded Abbot Xavier Connelly, who was elected in June 2010 and who resigned in March 2021 because of illness. A great friend of the College, Abbot Xavier passed away on April 8th, 2021. On August 15th, 2021, Bishop McManus, Bishop of the Diocese of Worcester, officially blessed Abbot Marc in St. John’s Church in Clinton, Massachusetts, where some 650 friends of the Abbey gathered for the celebration.
Abbot Marc’s Coat of Arms bears a winged lion for St. Mark, whose Gospel calls Christ “Son of Mary,” and a Benedictine cross combined with a Marian cross. A poppy in the cross’s center symbolizes joy. Abbot Crilly chose as his motto “Caritas congaudet veritati” (“Charity rejoices in the truth,” from 1 Cor. 13:6), which felicitously is also the motto of Thomas More College of Liberal Arts.
Francis Xavier Maier is a Senior Fellow in Catholic Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (Washington, D.C.). For several decades Mr. Maier has dedicated his life to studying the interplay between faith, culture, and public life, while advising lay and religious leadership within the Church on the role of the laity in modern society.
Mr. Maier’s education was pursued at a variety of institutions of higher education. His undergraduate days were spent at the University of Notre Dame. After his baccalaureate years, he pursued an MFA at the University of New York, where he specialized in film production and screenplay writing. He undertook advanced studies at the American Film Institute’s Center for Advanced Studies, where he was a Screenwriting Fellow. This work continued with nearly a decade of writing for United Artists, Warner Brothers, and many independent projects. Mr. Maier’s artistry was recognized by his being nominated and made a full member of the Writer’s Guild of America. As the culture of Hollywood changed, Mr. Maier left to write a novel on the Fall of Saigon, during which time he was invited to become the Editor-in-Chief of the National Catholic Register.
After fifteen years at the helm of the National Catholic Register, Mr. Maier was invited by Archbishop Charles Chaput to become his Senior Advisor and Special Assistant, a role he continued for nearly a quarter of a century in both the Archdiocese of Denver and Philadelphia. In addition to his work with Archbishop Chaput, Mr. Maier is the co-founding trustee of the Collegium Institute for Catholic Thought at the University of Pennsylvania and a Board member of the Napa Institute, which is dedicated to the ongoing formation of lay Catholic leadership in the United States. Currently, he is also Research Scholar at the Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government. Mr. Maier’s many essays and cultural commentary have appeared in such publications as The Catholic Thing, Crisis Magazine, Catholic World Report, First Things, This World, Commonweal, The New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and National Review.
In recognition of his decades of service for our faith, Pope John Paul II awarded Francis Maier and his wife Suann Maier, a distinguished teacher and pro-life leader, with the titles of Knight and Dame of the Order of St. Gregory—the highest papal honor granted to the laity—in 2005. In 2019, they were elevated to Knight Commander and Dame Commander within the Order. Francis and Suann Maier have been married for over half a century. They have four children and nearly a dozen grandchildren.
