Lawrence B GuillotLawrence Guillot is unusually well equipped to research and write this history of the National Catholic Reporter. A former priest with a doctorate in theology, he has run nonprofits and provided expert consulting services to firms facing the kinds ofissues challenging NCR. He was acquainted with NCR's founders and has followed its evolution closely. When Pope John XXIII announced in 1959 his plans to convene the Second Vatican Council, Guillot was a masters' degree candidate in theology in Rome, living at the North American College. After ordination to the priesthood in 1960 and the degree completed, he did two years of pastoral work in his hometown of Kansas City, Missouri. His associates included NCR's first board chair, publisher, and editor. He returned to Rome to begin doctoral work in ecumenical theology at the Gregorian University in 1963-65 and was present at the second and third Sessions of Vatican II. As he had written articles for the Kansas City Star-Times and the Catholic Reporter, he was able to obtain a press pass and attend debriefings on events of Vatican Council II. When the new Joint Commission on Anglican-Roman Catholic Relations was formed, Guillot was appointed Joint Secretary of the Joint Commission with the task of managing the working documents and reports of the Commission. He completed the dissertation and published the conclusions in Ministry in Ecumenical Perspective (Gregorian University, 1969). Active in ecumenical affairs, he was a regular contributor to The Journal of Ecumenical Affairs, the Ecumenist, and Unity Trends. After serving as a Catholic priest for ten years, Guillot petitioned for and received a dispensation from the clerical state and married in 1970. He and his wife Leslie, a native of Saint Louis, chose Kansas City as home base. They have two daughters, Ann and Laura, and four grandchildren. He refocused his professional life on community service and over the next 40 years managed a training center for VISTA volunteers, was the first ombudsman/executive director of a human relations/civil rights office in county government, associate director of a large nonprofit community development housing agency, dean of continuing education in the metropolitan community college system, executive director of a consulting service to nonprofit social service agencies, and his own consulting service. Together with another executive director, he published Manage for Excellence: A Workbook for the Nonprofit Manager (Kansas City, 1985). From 1985 to 2011, he served as senior graduate adjunct professor for the Graduate School of Public Affairs of Park University. He co-designed the curriculum for a new degree in the management of nonprofit organizations and taught classes in Social Policy, the Nature of the Nonprofit Sector, and the Management of Nonprofit Organizations, first in the classroom and then online versions. Read More Read Less
