Send Out Your Spirit Candidate's Handbook

Michael Amodei is executive editor and curriculum development manager at Ave Maria Press. He writes and edits Catholic high school religion textbooks and is the author of several books, including Reaching for Heaven: 14 Spiritual Goals as You Grow Older, Send Out Your Spirit, Catholic Essentials, The Ave Guide to the Scriptural Rosary, and The Ave Guide to Eucharistic Adoration. Amodei has also acquired numerous spirituality books for Ave Maria Press.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s degree in religious education from Loyola Marymount University. Amodei previously served as director of religious education and youth minister at St. Monica Catholic Church and taught various subjects and coached CYO sports at St. Monica Elementary School. He leads the Ave Maria Press Chapter of Catholic Relief Services, is a member of the Association of Catholic Publishers, and is a third-degree Knight of Columbus.

Amodei has been a youth sports coach for over forty years and is the field supervisor for home football games at the University of Notre Dame. He lives with his family in South Bend, Indiana.

Fr. Daniel J. Mahan is a priest of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis and the first director of the USCCB’s Institute on the Catechism.

He earned a bachelor of arts from St. Meinrad Seminary, a bachelor of sacred theology from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome, and a licentiate in sacred theology from the Pontifical Athenaeum of St. Anselm.

In collaboration with the Franciscans of the Immaculate, Mahan produced A Tour of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a seventy-two-part video series where he teaches the Catechism in its entirety through ten-minute segments. He currently resides in Washington D.C.