2005 MLK Eucharistic Service Homilist
Bishop Dominic Carmon is a native of Southwest Louisiana, an area of the state that is culturally referred to as Acadiana, because of its Canadian and Creole influences. He was born in the Civil Parish of St. Landry and spent his childhood in the farming community known as Gradney Island. He is the eldest of seven children of Edna Robert and Aristile Carmon. Upon the completion of his elementary schooling, he began his seminary training with the Society of the Divine Word at St Augustine Minor Seminary, Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Bishop Carmon did his novitiate at St. Mary’s Seminary, Techny Illinois, and began his college preparation at St. Paul Seminary, Epworth, Iowa. In 1954, Bishop Carmon returned to St. Augustine Major Seminary to complete his last six years of training in philosophy and theology.
After his ordination in 1960, Bishop Carmon was assigned as Assistant Pastor of St. Anselm Catholic Church in Chicago, Illinois . A year later, he was assigned to the Society of the Divine Word Mission in New Guinea. He served as a pastoral missionary in the Diocese of Wewak in Papua from 1961 to 1968. Upon his return to the United States, Bishop Carmon continued his pastoral ministry at St. Elizabeth Church in Chicago, 1969-1984; Our Lady of the Gardens, Chicago,1984-1988. In 1988 he returned to his native Louisiana to pastor the largest Black Catholic parish in the United States, Holy Ghost Catholic Church in Opelousas, St. Landry Civil Parish, in the Diocese of Lafayette.
On December 16, 1992, Bishop Carmon was appointed Titular Bishop of Rusicade and Auxiliary Bishop, Archdiocese of New Orleans, by Pope John Paul II, and was ordained bishop in the Cathedral of St. Louis King of France by Archbishop Francis B. Shulte, February 11, 1993. Currently, he serves as the Vicar General and Consultor for the Archdiocese of New Orleans and as Pastor of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church in Kenner, Louisiana .
Bishop Carmon has done graduate work at DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois, and the Divine Word Tertiate, Nemi Italy. His honors in clued the Doctor of Humane Letters, Honoris Causa, from Our Lady of Holy Cross College in New Orleans, and the Doctor of Letters, Honoris Causa from Notre Dame Seminary, also in New Orleans. Bishop Carmon’s many awards, honors, appointments and elections, speak well of the range of his gifts and the manner in which he has used them to benefit others. The public acknowledgements of these provide mere glimpses of the quality and effectiveness of Bishop Carmon’s priestly ministry and the wholesomeness of the spiritual person that he is. They do not tell the complete story of the consummate pastor who tended his flock with the utmost care, and continues to do so. Nor do these say much about his quiet and unassuming demeanor and the great strength that seems to flows so unpretentiously and naturally from the humble and genuinely saintly person that he truly is. Bishop Carmon is indeed the good shepherd and one who will tend the flock in attendance at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration in the way that he has always distinguished his priestly pastoral ministry. As all will say in one accord, “it was a blessing to have him minister to us.”
2005 MLK Celebration Weekend
rooted in LOVE • grounded in PEACE • united in JUSTICE
The Shrine of the Immaculate Conception • 48 MLK Jr. Drive