Fr. Chrys McVey is a Dominican friar of the Province of St. Joseph, who was born in New Jersey, in sight of the Atlantic Ocean. However, he spent half his life in the deserts of Pakistan, "where," he says, "his education really began." He served there in various capacities--as pastor, novice- and student-master, seminary professor, director of a pastoral institute, executive secretary for the Conference of Religious, and as the first provincial of the newly independent Dominican vice-province of Pakistan.

After 40 years in Pakistan, Fr. Chrys was appointed Socius to the Master of the Order, with responsibility for Mission, and served six years on the General Council of the Order in Rome. He remains a member of the Dialogue Commission of the Order and the Order's Commission for the Promotion of Study. He has contributed chapters to many books and has written for international journals on Pakistan, Dominican Spirituality, and Contextual Theology, as well as on the theological implications of the dialogue with Islam for Christian faith and practice.

For him, coming to St. Joseph's is like rounding the circle because his great-great grandparents, from Genoa and from Donegal, first settled in Greenwich Village when they arrived in the 1840s.