Brother Herman Johnson, OP

Herman Johnson was born in New Orleans on December 23, 1954 and did his undergraduate studies at Xavier University of Louisiana.  He was drawn to the Dominicans at the age of ten when he came upon a pamphlet at home of a Dominican brother — St. Martin de Porres — who looked like him.  He was professed at St. Martin de Porres Novitiate in Columbia, SC in 1981. He received his M.Th. and M.Div. from the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley, CA, an M.A. in mental health counseling from Xavier University, and a Doctorate in the Teaching of Spanish from Columbia University Teachers College in New York.  Johnson is currently assistant professor of Spanish at Xavier University of New Orleans and an active member of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese. In 2007, Johnson was elected Prior of St. Anthony of Padua Priory — the first time in the then 791 year history of the Dominican friars that a cooperator brother had been elected a local superior (because the Dominican Constitution required that a brother be a priest in order to be elected a superior, his election required a special dispensation from the Vatican’s Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.  Johnson is also director of, and preacher for, Southern Dominican Global Missions.