“What do you do with a guy like Brother David?” said CNEWA’s former president, Msgr. Robert L. Stern, with a wry smile and a few hand gestures. I remember laughing, knowing what was to follow:
“You let him be Brother David!”
Austin David Paul Carroll (1935 to 2024) — a De La Salle Brother of the Christian Schools, information data director, comedian, consultant, author, justice and peace advocate, legend, adviser, mentor and model train enthusiast, practical jokester and special assistant to the president of CNEWA-Pontifical Mission from 1985 to 2009 — was a force of nature for those who knew and loved him, a man of principle with a passion for justice and peace. He was also a rascal.
Early in my career at CNEWA I would hear him scribbling in longhand on his legal pads in the neighboring office. His multiple “letters to the editor,” using multitude forms of his multiple names, set off firestorms in newspaper editorial pages, but they became examples of performance art. After observing what he had wrought, and achieving his objective, he would douse the flames with a final letter. The fire would begin with a letter signed Austin David and draw to a close by one authored by Brother Carroll. My colleague Peg Maron and I would shake our heads and laugh as “Himself” would leave his office, gesturing to himself and saying with an impish smile, “Who, me?”
It was genius, mischievous and effective. In so many ways, David reminded me of Charles Durning performing the Sidestep, a routine from a musical comedy from the early 1980s — he could bedazzle and bewilder and skirt through controversy with such grace and wit and charm — and then make his move to get through what he thought needed to be said: So often, it was to spell out examples of injustice and oppression in the Holy Land and the need for justice to bring about a lasting peace.
Brother David entered religious life in 1953, received his habit and religious name, Austin, the same year, pronouncing perpetual vows in 1960. His career was long and varied and included assignments in the schools of his religious community, data system services in the dioceses of Brooklyn and New York, and a variety of roles with CNEWA-Pontifical Mission, which included serving as an adviser to the permanent observer of the Holy See to the United Nations. To say he was an instrument in helping to found the Path to Peace Foundation of the Holy See Mission would be an understatement.
May the angels lead you, Austin David Paul Carroll, into paradise; may the martyrs come to welcome you and take you to the holy city, the new and eternal Jerusalem.
May choirs of angels welcome you and lead you to the bosom of Abraham; and where Lazarus is poor no longer and may you find eternal rest.
God give you eternal rest, Brother David, and thank you for all your tireless work on behalf of the people served by Catholic Near East Welfare Association. “You done good.”