Fr. Randall Soto, S.T.D. was born in San José,Costa Rica and became an American citizen in 2017. In 1986, he earned a Bachelor’s in Philosophy at the Seminario Central of San José and a MA in Theology at Saint Joseph’s Seminary of the Archdiocese of New York (Class of 1991). He obtained a Licentiate in Biblical Theology in 1996, as well as his Doctorate in Biblical Theology in 2003.
Fr. Soto has been a professor of Sacred Scripture and Biblical Languages at the Pontifical North American College for the Pontifical Gregorian University and the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome (2017- 2022). He has also served as a parish priest, as a professor of Old and New Testament at the Universidad Católica of Costa Rica and the Seminario Central de San José, Costa Rica (1996-2000 and 2003-2004), as Director of Faith Enculturation and Censor Librorum in the Archdiocese of San José (2003-2004), as Professor for Rensselaer College in the Permanent Diaconate Program of Lafayette- in-Indiana (2004-2006), as Censor Librorum, Formator and Professor of New Testament and Biblical Languages at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary in the Archdiocese of St. Louis, MO (2005-2009 and 2011-2017), as a Professor of New Testament at the Instituto Ciencias Religiosas in Toledo, Spain (2010-2011), and as Professor of Dogmatic Theology and Sacred Scripture for the online program of Holy Apostles Seminary, CT (2007-2022).
Fr. Soto has been the founder and editor of three academic journals: Theandrika (1986-1994) at the Seminario Central of San José, Vox Christi (2012-2016) at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary in Saint Louis, and Ex Latere Christi (2019- 2022) at the Pontifical North American College in Rome. He contributed to the foot-notes of the Spanish edition of the Biblia de Navarra Popular, edited by MTF in 2007. He also recently published in Rome a Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (2019) and was the editor of the Third Edition of the Manual of Prayers (2021) of the Pontifical North American College in Rome.
In the 2022-2023 academic year at St. Joseph’s, Fr. Soto will be teaching courses on “The Prophets,” “Introduction to the New Testament, “Johannine Literature,” and “Pauline and Johannine Literature.” He will also serve as an internal forum spiritual director to seminarians