I was born, the oldest of seven siblings, to John and Mary (Sweeney) McGinty of Lynn, Massachusetts USA.
ORIGINS & EDUCATION
My mother had emigrated to the United States three years earlier. My father was born of Irish immigrants of the prior generation, his father, John, from Barnesmore Gap, County Donegal and his mother, Beatrice, from Mullagh, Dromahair, County Leitrim.
Baptized in Saint John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church in Swampscott MA, I attended Catholic school in elementary and secondary schools and graduated from Saint Mary’s High School, Lynn, in 1975. I then studied at Saint John’s Seminary College (Brighton MA) of the Archdiocese of Boston, receiving a B.A. in Philosophy in 1979. By the autumn of that year I was resident at the North American College in Rome and studied at the Pontifical Gregorian University.
ORDINATION & MINISTRY
On June 11, 1983 my classmates and I were ordained as priests in the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in the South End of Boston MA by Humberto Cardinal Medeiros, Archbishop of Boston. Cardinal Medeiros had arrived in the US as an immigrant from the Azores in his teens.
Returning to Rome to take up doctoral studies, in June 1990 I defended my thesis. Its topic is The Genesis of Nostra Aetate‘s Statement on the Jewish People: A Study of the Development of a Positive Attitude Toward the Jewish People in the Catholic Church in the USA. My director for doctoral studies was Francis A. Sullivan SJ of the Gregorian Univeristy. I was privileged to serve on the faculty of Saint John’s Seminary College and School of Theology from 1990 to 1996.
I served in several parish assignments in the Archdiocese of Boston, including as pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in my hometown of Lynn MA. I spent the summer of 2005 on sabbatical with the Benedictines of Glenstal Abbey in County Limerick, Ireland. After returning to the US, I asked for a leave of absence from active ministry. During that time I worked at Boston College at the Institute of Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry (IREPM), and later at the Church in the 21st Century Center.
Late in 2010 I relocated to New York and connected to the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island. I served as Director of Communications for the Diocese, as Assistant to the Rector at Grace Church in Brooklyn Heights, as Dean of the Mercer School of Theology, and as Rector of Saint Anselm’s Church, Shoreham.
In 2020 I returned to my native state of Massachusetts and became Rector of the Church of Saint Matthew in Worcester, MA. On August 1, 2024 I retired from active ministry and the next month relocated to Ireland to volunteer as priest-in-charge of the Clonfert Union of Parishes of the Diocese of Tuam, Limerick and Killaloe until January 2026.
I continue to minister on a part-time basis in area churches, to write, and to work for justice in this world which God has gifted to us as stewards.