Philip Caraman was born in 1911 in London, England, to René André Caraman and Betina Pasqua. Both parents were Catholics and instilled strong religious beliefs in their nine children; their sons, Philip and John, became priests and two of their daughters became nuns. Philip and John attended Stonyhurst College, a Jesuit institution in Lancashire. Philip joined the Society of Jesus in 1930.

Caraman continued his religious training at Oxford under mentor Martin D'Arcy, SJ. With D'Arcy's guidance, Caraman made connections with influential Catholics, including Laura and Evelyn Waugh. Caraman was ordained a priest in Mayfair in 1945. After his ordination, he became editor of the Jesuit periodical The Month. With the help of writers such as Waugh and Graham Greene, Caraman was able to shift the fledging periodical to a prominent magazine.

Caraman published John Gerard: The Autobiography of an Elizabethan (1951), the first of his translations from Latin of Catholic autobiographies, followed by William Weston: An Autobiography from the Jesuit Underground (1955). Caraman continued to write about historically influential Catholics, publishing: Henry Morse: Priest of the Plague (1957), a biography; The Other Face: Catholic Life under Elizabeth I (1960), chronicling Elizabethan Catholic life; Henry Garnet and the Gunpowder Plot (1961), detailing Garnet's involvement in the plot against King James and his subsequent imprisonment and execution, and C. C. Martindale: A Biography (1967). During the 1950s, Caraman was also involved in the conversion of several influential British literary figures to Catholicism, including Muriel Spark and Edith Sitwell.

Following the ordination of John W. Gran as the first Norwegian-born bishop of Oslo in the early 1960s, Caraman became the chaplain to the English-speaking population there. While there, Caraman completed The Years of Siege, a continuation of the story of Catholics in England. Caraman traveled between Londonand Scandinavia in the 1960s, inspiring his guides Norway (1969) and Sweden (unpublished). In the early 1970s, Caraman went to Africa with his brother John and also visited South America. He subsequently published The Lost Paradise: the Jesuit Republic in South America (1975) and The Lost Empire: the Story of Jesuits in Ethiopia (1985).

Caraman returned to Oslo for a three-year appointment at St. Olav's in Tønsberg, Norway in 1976, then returned to England at age 70.

After this, Caraman made frequent trips to Rome, contributed to the Encyclopedia of the Jesuits, and worked at small parishes. Caraman published: Ignatius Loyola: a Biography of the Founder of the Jesuits (1990); The Western Rising (1994), an account of sixteenth-century Catholic uprisings; and Meditations for To-morrow, (1998) published posthumously.

Philip Caraman, SJ, died on May 6, 1998, at the age of 86.

Source:

Rockett, June. A Gentle Jesuit: Philip Caraman, SJ (1911-1998). Herefordshire, England: Gracewing, 2004.