BRAINTREE -- Father Paul Soper, director of clergy personnel for the Archdiocese of Boston, was honored with the Avery Cardinal Dulles Ad Intra Award at the Priests for an Apostolic Age Conference in San Antonio, Texas, on Jan. 23.

The conference was sponsored by the Catholic Leadership Institute and the Evangelical Catholic, two nonprofits that promote evangelization. Father Soper received the award, named after the Jesuit theologian Cardinal Avery Dulles, for developing and implementing leadership education, training, and consulting programs for clergy, staff, and laity in the Archdiocese of Boston.

"It feels great to have received the award," Father Soper told The Pilot on Jan. 17. "I'm very pleased about it."

Father Soper has been a user and strong promoter of the Catholic Leadership Institute's Disciple Maker Index, a survey of practicing Catholics conducted by the institute and given to parishes. Over 600,000 Catholics have responded to the survey, describing their "discipleship practices" and how they perceive their parishes and their faith. Father Soper said he is "very pleased" by his work with the index.

"It's providing us with very good, very healthy data about the life of the church in the United States and the best practices of the church in order to form our parishioners as missionary disciples," he said.

He previously served as the Archdiocese of Boston's secretary for evangelization and discipleship, overseeing Disciples in Mission, its pastoral planning program. In Boston and beyond, Father Soper has assisted in pastoral planning and given workshops on discipleship, both on his own and with the Catholic Leadership Institute.

"He's a great advocate of the same thing they are, which is making disciples, and I was pleased that they recognized that," Vicar General Bishop Mark O'Connell told The Pilot on Jan. 15.

Bishop O'Connell is not only Father Soper's professional collaborator but also describes himself as his best friend. The two men have known each other since their college days and were classmates at St. John's Seminary.

"His listening, caring, being honest about everything, is a great benefit," Bishop O'Connell said. "He's also extremely talented in computer science, stemming back from his days at Harvard."

Those skills have come in handy throughout his work in the archdiocese. While he was secretary of evangelization, he also served as co-pastor of St. Margaret Mary Parish and St. Denis Parish in Westwood. Father Soper was responsible for overseeing the many parish collaborations that came out of Disciples in Mission, including the merging of his own parishes in Westwood.

"The smaller parish was wary of combining with a bigger parish," Bishop O'Connell recalled. "Father Soper and his co-pastor, Father Bob Blaney, recognized that one parish was not ready and not fully trusting of the process, and they listened and talked and made sure to reassure everyone at St. Denis that they were not closing. In the end, they gave great success to collaborating with St. Margaret Mary."

The combined parishes became St. Joan of Arc Parish, a name Father Soper and Father Blaney came up with together.

"Father Soper leads with kindness and is a great listener," Bishop O'Connell said, "and yet he can also do the difficult work of making decisions even though not everyone agrees."

Father Soper's first five parish assignments were in each of the five regions of the Archdiocese of Boston. To Bishop O'Connell, the assignments were God's work.

"They were of such variety that it prepared him to know the whole diocese and a whole variety of parishes and ministries," he said.

Father Soper thanked Cardinal Seán P. O'Malley and Archbishop Richard G. Henning for their evangelization work; his friends, both clergy and laity, for their faith and discipleship; and his parents for passing faith to him.

"The models by which they passed on faith to me becomes part of the model with which I pass on faith to others," he said.

He also expressed his gratitude to Catholic Leadership Institute CEO Dan Cellucci.

"I am most grateful to him for allowing me to participate in the work of the Disciple Maker Index and various other things throughout the years," he said.