[citation needed] In 1953 he entered the minor seminary of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart at Douglas Park and he then completed his Novitiate for the priesthood there.
[1] After his ordination, Fr Stenhouse was appointed Business Manager of the Catholic journal popularly known as the Annals which was produced at the Sacred Heart Monastery.
[2] Fr Stenhouse began a Bachelor of Arts course at the University of Sydney, majoring in Modern Hebrew and Arabic and graduating with Honours in 1972.
He was influenced in this by Professor Alan Crown, who taught in the Semitic Studies Department at Sydney University, who became a lifelong friend.
He became proficient at many languages including Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Greek, Latin, German, Italian, French and Croatian.
His thesis was a critical edition of the middle Arabic Samaritan text, the Kitab al Tarikh of Abu'l-Fath.
Fr Stenhouse and Phillip travelled to Ukraine, East Timor and China, among other places, giving readers of Annals and ACN News eyewitness accounts of how the church was surviving there.
Archbishop Anthony Fisher said at his funeral that with the death of Fr Paul Stenhouse, "a light has been extinguished in our world, even if for him it has merely been a change of address.