My wife, Rene’, and I live in Bethel Park and have three young adult children, TJ, Lucy and Daniel. I grew up in the Lehigh Valley in eastern Pennsylvania. My hometown is Nazareth…home of Martin Guitars and Mario Andretti! I moved to Southern California at the age of 21 to pursue a career in popular music. In the course of my efforts to “make it” in the music industry, my manager…a former Benedictine nun concerned for my soul…talked me into making a retreat at a Benedictine monastery in Oceanside, California. The rest, as they say, is history!

After returning to the Church as a young adult in California, my interest in secular music waned as I was trained in the areas of youth and young adult ministry in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, as well as music and liturgy at Mt. St. Mary’s and the University of Notre Dame. God finds ways to use whatever you bring to serve, however, and I’ve had the opportunity to work in music and evangelization on a local and national level since 1983, when I became the first cradle Catholic to be signed by a major Christian record label (Word Entertainment), and spent a number of years giving concerts and workshops across the US and Canada, including many national Catholic youth, young adult and liturgy events. I also had the privilege to work for the Paulist National Catholic Evangelization Association under Fr. Alvin Illig, as part of their youth/young adult outreach. Fr. Illig was a visionary who saw clearly where we are as American Catholics today back in the 80’s, and radically changed the way I looked at evangelization as a lay Catholic. A high point of those years would have to be having the honor of being the principal performer at the Papal Youth Rally in the Superdome in New Orleans in 1987, where I sang and led the ultimate singalong with 75,000 people as we welcomed Pope John Paul II with the theme song I composed for his visit!

We moved our family to Bethel Park in 1995, and I have served several parishes in the diocese since our arrival. I’m so grateful to be here, serving the parish family of St. Benedict the Abbot Church!