Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility

Remembering Fr. Joseph Tylenda, SJ, Professor of Theology, Author and Chaplain

Rev. Joseph N. Tylenda, SJ,was born in Dickson City, Pa. on June 26, 1928. He attended the University of Scranton and entered the Society of Jesus at the Novitiate of St. Isaac Jogues in Wernersville, Pa. in 1948. He received his Licentiate in Sacred Theology from Weston Jesuit Community in Weston, Ma., and his Doctor of Sacred Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He was ordained a priest on June 18, 1960.

Fr. Tylenda was a professor of Theology and the librarian at Woodstock College in Woodstock, Md. in the late sixties. In 1970, he began serving the Pontificium Institutum Biblicum in Rome as the assistant editor of oriental publications. He returned to the States in 1973 where he worked for a year at Loyola College in Maryland teaching Theology. From 1974-1979, he served as minister for the Woodstock Theological Center in Washington, D.C., and then at Georgetown University as the managing editor of Theological Studies through 1985.

Fr. Tylenda then returned to Rome for a nine-year assignment at the Casa degli Scittori, working on the Encyclopedia of Jesuit History. In 1994, he came home to Georgetown to serve as prefect of the Woodstock Library. While there, he translated the original text of St. Ignatius Loyola’s autobiography with informative commentary for a book entitled, Pilgrim’s Journey. In 2003, he moved to Scranton, Pa. to serve as chaplain at Marywood University, and in 2011, he published the highly-acclaimed Pilgrim’s Guide to Rome’s Principal Churches, an illustrated tour of fifty-one of the most important churches in Rome.

Fr. Tylenda passed away at Colombiere Jesuit Community in Baltimore on August 13, 2018 at the age of 90, praying for the Church and the Society of Jesus.