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Jeremy Puntel ’19 CLAS felt the call to become a priest in high school but was hesitant to take the first step. He still had questions that needed answers and decided that the classes and curriculum offered by the Department of Humanities provided the academic atmosphere he was searching for. What he found at ����ר�� was a space where, he says, “more robust resources for thinking could be nurtured and exercised fruitfully.”

Puntel recalls it was under the patient tutelage of his Humanities professors that the world’s greatest philosophers, like Plato and Aristotle, became more accessible to him. He also began to reaffirm his Catholic faith while examining Augustine’s Confessions. In his junior year, he gained deeper insight into the Bible at Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford, where he studied as a recipient of the Catherine Barr Windels Scholarship, which is given each year to a Humanities student.

After graduation, Puntel received his master’s degree in Theological Studies from the John Paul II Institute in Washington, DC, and ultimately entered St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Now in his third year studying to be a priest, Puntel continues to be guided by his Humanities background. “I keep in mind that each person is a unique and free relationship with the infinite,” he says. “This means their questions never have a ‘canned’ answer.” And when searching for those answers, he’s thankful to have an education spanning 3,000 years of human wisdom and a broad array of disciplines to draw upon.