Carey Landry

Carey Landry was born in 1936 in Louisiana and was ordained a Catholic priest in the Diocese of Lafayette. He pursued graduate studies in liturgy and music, and his formation took place during the transformative years surrounding the Second Vatican Council, which profoundly shaped his approach to congregational worship song. His work belongs to the first generation of American Catholic composers who embraced the council's mandate for fully participatory, vernacular liturgy. Landry is best known for his extensive output of liturgical songs published primarily through OCP (Oregon Catholic Press), for whom he became one of the most widely distributed composers of the post-conciliar era. His music is marked by accessible, folk-influenced melodies and texts drawn closely from scripture and the liturgical tradition. He has composed settings for virtually every part of the Mass and the liturgical year, with a particular gift for songs aimed at children and families, a dimension of his work that has given him unusual staying power across multiple generations of Catholic worshippers. Among his most enduring contributions are his settings of Marian texts and his Mass settings designed for parish use. His collections, including the widely used 'Hi God' series aimed at young Catholics, helped establish a model for music ministry programming in American parishes during the 1970s and beyond. He has also served as a workshop leader and music minister, contributing to the formation of parish musicians across the United States. Landry continues to be recognized as a pioneering figure in American Catholic contemporary worship music whose work helped define the sound of post-Vatican II parish life in the United States.