Paul Bredestege

Brother Paul Bredestege, a member of the Society of Mary, known as the Marianists, spent nearly seven decades as a professed religious and educator in the Catholic order founded to serve through teaching. He died on October 4, 2026, in the Dayton, Ohio area at the age of 88, having completed 69 years of religious profession as a Marianist brother.

Bredestege was a native of Cincinnati, Ohio, the son of John and Florence (Gates) Bredestege. He pursued his undergraduate studies at the University of Dayton, a school long associated with the Marianists, earning a bachelor of arts degree in Spanish and history in 1960. He later added a master of arts degree in Spanish studies from Middlebury College in Vermont in 1970, credentials that supported a long teaching career built around language instruction and Catholic secondary and higher education.

Over the course of his ministry, Bredestege taught at the University of Dayton itself and at a number of Marianist high schools, part of a network of Catholic schools the order has operated across the United States. Brothers in the Society of Mary typically combine vowed religious life, poverty, chastity and obedience, with work as teachers, administrators, chaplains and pastors, and Bredestege's decades in the classroom placed him within that long tradition of Marianist education in Ohio and beyond.

His death was confirmed through an obituary published by the Dayton Daily News, which noted his 69 years as a professed member of the order. He was preceded in death by his parents and by his sister, Mary Helene Delaney. He is survived by his brother and sister-in-law, J. Thomas and Cherie Bredestege, along with nieces and nephews. As a Catholic religious brother under a vow of celibacy, he did not marry and had no children of his own, though he is remembered by generations of students he taught during his years in Marianist classrooms.

Plans were announced for his funeral, to be held on the University of Dayton campus where he had both studied and taught decades earlier. No cause of death has been made public, and at this early stage there has been no wider public statement from the University of Dayton or the Marianist province beyond the published obituary notice.