Rev. Tom Marciniak, S.J.

Born in Brooklyn, New York of William and Victoria Marciniak, I grew up as a Polish Catholic boy attending elementary school taught by the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth. My eighth grade teacher, Sr. Mary Generosa, had quietly arranged with Fr. Headmaster at Brooklyn Prep (the Jesuit High School in Brooklyn which closed in the early 1970s) that I would spend my high school years with the Jesuits. Need more be said?

I entered the Society of Jesus after high school at St. Andrew-on-Hudson with undergraduate studies at Loyola Seminary in Shrub Oak, New York and Fordham University. For regency I was asked to teach at Xavier High School – not on the island of Manhattan but rather in the far flung islands of Micronesia. I had seen a film of the Jesuit work in the Caroline-Marshall Islands during my high school years and immediately began my discernment about where I would do my regency! Would you believe?

I loved my three years as a regent teaching and also learning about the peoples, languages and cultures of the Pacific Islands. After theology studies and ordination in 1976 I returned to Micronesia as a priest and ministered there until 1991.

I returned to the States to do retreat ministry in Morristown, New Jersey and also began to care for my aging parents. I was involved in Campus Ministry work at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York from 1993-2006. I then was assigned to Fordham as Minister at Loyola Hall until 2012 when we moved over to Murray-Weigel-Kohlmann. Besides the usual work of caring for the temporal needs of the community, I was blessed by accompanying our older brothers along the path of their physical diminishment, death and returning the gift of their lives to the Holy Mystery of God who promises eternal life and joy in the Resurrection.

This past academic year I have been on sabbatical. As 2016 comes to a close, I will begin a new ministry at the Loyola Jesuit Center in Morristown, New Jersey where I will dedicate my remaining years and pastoral energy in service of Christ’s mission.

This 50-year journey would not have been possible without the love, encouragement, company and prayers of so many friends in the Lord and my family. Deo Gratias for the adventure of my life in the Society of Jesus. I look forward on tiptoe of expectation to meeting more of God’s People through my new ministry here at Loyola Jesuit Center.