Fr. Tom is a native of Derry, New Hampshire, and had his first career in electrical engineering, having received his bachelor’s degree from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1974. Fr. Tom was employed for several years at Malden Mills in Lawrence, MA, during which time he was a member of St. Joseph Parish, helping with the youth group and living as a member of the lay community housed in what is now the convent.

In 1982 he took time off to earn a master’s degree in Philosophy from Boston College, and later worked as a nurses aid at a nursing home in Manchester. In 1995, after twenty years in engineering, Fr. Tom entered the Jesuits to begin his ten year preparation for ordination. During that time he obtained his Masters of Divinity, as well as degrees in Pastoral Counseling and Systematic Theology. Those ten years also included time spent as a hospital chaplain, a missionary to Jamaica, and a member of African American parishes in Baltimore, MD and Roxbury MA.

After ordination to the priesthood in 2005, Fr. Tom returned to Jamaica for work in spiritual ministries and for teaching at the local catholic college. In 2007, he became pastor for two of Kingston’s inner city parishes. He left Jamaica in 2010, and moved to Weston, MA to begin his “Tertianship”, an eight month preparation for final vows. Tertianship gave Fr. Tom the opportunity to teach a course in mysticism to the Jesuit seminarians of Kolkata, India, and also to encounter firsthand the Hindu religion. Fr. Tom came to Saints Mary and Joseph Parish in 2011, and took his final vows here in June of 2014.