Patrick Madrid is an American author and radio host. His many books include Why Be Catholic?, Life Lessons: 50 Things I Learned in My First 50 Years, and How to Do Apologetics. His books have sold over one million copies, including foreign-language editions. He hosts the “Patrick Madrid Show” radio program on , three hours daily on more than 170 AM & FM stations across the U.S., Monday through Friday. The “Patrick Madrid Show” airs daily in major U.S. metro markets, including Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Sacramento, Chicago, the Twin Cities, Boston, New York City, Denver, Atlanta, Dallas, San Antonio, Phoenix, Kansas City, Albuquerque, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., St. Louis, Orlando, Miami, Jacksonville, Las Vegas, Providence, Salt Lake City, Milwaukee, and Austin. Aside from his radio presence, Madrid is best known for his work in Catholic apologetics. He worked for eight years at , serving as vice president. He has published numerous popular on Scripture, Church history, patristics, apologetics, and evangelization in various Catholic and Protestant periodicals and has contributed scholarly articles on apologetics in the New Catholic Encyclopedia. He and his wife, Nancy, have 11 children and 25 grandchildren.
Early Life
Patrick Madrid was born on November 8, 1960, in Lynwood, California, a near suburb of Los Angeles. His father, Bernard Madrid served for four years in the U.S. Coast Guard as a sailor, after which he had a long career as an electronics engineer. His mother, Gretchen, was a housewife. Madrid is the oldest of their eight children, one of whom died shortly after birth of pulmonary complications. Growing up in Southern California, Madrid was baptized at Saint Mary of the Assumption Catholic Church in Whittier and was raised primarily in Orange County, attending the Mission San Juan CapistranoGrammar School for several years.
Biography
Patrick Madrid has been active in apologetics since 1987. He hosts The Patrick Madrid Show on weekdays 9-noon ET, discussing current events, modern culture, apologetics, and a variety of "God topics." Madrid does not have guests or conduct interviews on his show, but instead, engages listeners with personal commentary and interacts extensively with callers. He has conducted thousands of apologetics seminars in English and Spanish at parishes, conferences, and universities across the United States, as well as throughout Europe, Canada, in Latin America, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and Israel. Since 1990, he has been a regular presenter at the Franciscan University of Steubenville's "Defending the Faith" summer and has been a guest lecturer in theology at Christendom College in their "Major Speakers" program. Madrid has engaged in at least a dozen formal public debates with Protestant, Mormon, and other non-Catholic spokesmen. Many of his lectures and debates can be found on YouTube. He founded what is now known as the Envoy institute in 1996 with the launch of Envoy Magazine, which reached a peak circulation of approximately 12,000 paid subscribers. The magazine was discontinued in 2011 when it lost its institutional funding source. Madrid earned a bachelor of science degree in business management from the University of Phoenix as well as a B.Phil in philosophy and an M.A. in dogmatic theology from the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio. He did graduate studies in theology at the University of Dallas. He has taught undergraduate courses on apologetics and the sacraments as an adjunct professor on the theology faculty at . He currently serves as an adjunct professor of apologetics at and at in Menlo Park, California. A life-long avid fan of the Beatles, after playing trumpet in grammar school since the fourth grade, Madrid switched to the bass guitar at the age of 14, playing in various area garage bands, and eventually played bass for several years in Geneva Brown, an obscure Southern California rock band. He sometimes refers humorously on his radio show to his garage-band days by commenting on a particular word or phrase drawn news sources that he says would make for a "good garage band name." References
