Father Paul Morrissey, OSA, Augustinian friar and priest and long-time gay activist, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1939. He was the second of fourteen children in the family of Tom and Nora (Hardy) Morrissey. The family traced their roots back to Ireland from which both sets of his grandparents had emigrated. The family was devoutly Roman Catholic. Paul went to parochial school, St. Alice's in Upper Darby, where he learned the Baltimore Catechism by heart. He and his siblings worked in their father’s restaurant as they grew up. Paul started as a busboy at 14 years of age, working for 74 cents/ hour at first. Industriousness and fiscal responsibility were family virtues. Paul went to Msgr. Bonner High School, affiliated with the Augustinian Order. He was active in the outdoors—became a fast runner (to outrun his brothers) and an avid bicyclist.
Paul was adept in mathematics and physics and enrolled at Villanova University in 1957 to study civil engineering. He graduated with a BCE degree in 1961. He moved to Connecticut to begin working for the Sikorsky Aircraft Company, which manufactured helicopters, often used by the military. This was the first time in his life that he had lived alone. He missed the camaraderie of family and friends and spent time walking along the beach. On one of those solitary walks, he experienced God’s call to become a priest. At the same time, he was also becoming aware of his sexual attraction to men. He left Sikorsky after one year and began a novitiate year with the Augustinians in New Hamburg, New York. There he lived a rather cloistered life of contemplation, solitude and prayer.
In 1963, he returned to studies at Villanova as a friar, and later at the Augustinian College in Washington, D.C. In that day seminarians still wore habits. In one of his classes, Paul heard a professor/psychologist talk about a book he had written, "Counseling the invert." That was a revelatory experience for Paul, as he came to a clearer sense of his homosexual identity--"talking about me!" Paul decided to learn more about this through counseling, but with a professional he chose outside the sphere of his religious order.
He recalls meeting with a psychiatrist and sharing his thoughts and experiences in trepidation. The counselor responded with "Yes, it does appear that you have a homosexual orientation. But since you’re living in the religious order and intending a celibate life, I don’t see that it’s a problem for you. If it becomes a problem, come back and see me." That was a valuable affirming experience for Paul, but he felt he could still only share this realization about himself with a good friend in his community. To this day, Paul remembers this friend's acceptance "with his arm around my shoulder--like God's arm." He was twenty-five then, three years from ordination.
Ordained an Augustinian priest in 1967, Paul graduated in 1968 with a Licentiate in Sacred Theology (STL) degree from Catholic University. In seminary, Paul had studied with some of the giants of modern Catholic theology and scripture--Charles Curran and Roland Murphy. American society was in the throes of the Civil Rights Movements and the Vietnam War, and so Paul was schooled in protest. In 1968, Pope Paul VI issued his encyclical forbidding birth control, reversing the recommendation from the commission he had set up. Along with hundreds of others, Paul signed a statement that circulated in a major Catholic newspaper, disagreeing with the Pope’s position. When Paul was assigned to teach at Biscayne College in Florida, the president saw his name on this public list of protestors to the encyclical and refused to accept Paul on the faculty until he wrote to the Miami Diocese's cardinal, affirming that he would teach the official position of the church. Paul told the cardinal that he would teach the Pope’s position, but other views as well. No more questions were raised and Paul began his teaching. Yet after one year, he was transferred to Merrimack College in North Andover, Massachusetts. He was on the theology faculty as anti-war tumult gripped the campus. Paul and another professor started a draft counseling center. Student protests mushroomed nationwide amid the horrors of the Kent State killings as Paul's students were being drafted out of the classroom and sent to Vietnam.
In 1972, Paul was granted a sabbatical to study nonviolence with Quakers in Philadelphia. He could have lived at the Catholic Worker Center but decided he would have more personal freedom by living at the Quaker Life Center. He began living in a community of 8 persons there-- he as the only Catholic and priest--until 1978. During this period, he was able to come out as gay within this supportive community. Soon, he began public advocacy for Gay Catholics, co-founding the Philadelphia Chapter of Dignity. In 1976, he was part of a group, including Jeannine Gramick and Bob Nugent, that hosted "A mass for freedom and justice for Gay Catholics" on steps of the Eucharistic Congress gathering at the Civic Center in Philadelphia.
In 1977, Paul and Rick Woods, a Dominican priest, led a workshop for LGBTQ priests and nuns at the national Dignity convention in Chicago. Seventy-five people turned out for this workshop and the energy in the room was palpable. Paul asked persons present to give their names and addresses if they would like to stay in communication. With the assistance of another member of the Quaker Life Center, Paul sent out a one-page newsletter that included notes from the workshop and other information. This network ultimately became Communication Ministry, Incorporated (CMI), an international monthly newsletter, journal, and retreat ministry for LGBTQ priests, brothers, and sisters. The network grew and retreats were regularly conducted on the East and West Coasts. Journals on AIDS and Formation were published. CMI thrived until 1991 when--in the midst of the public scandals about priests and sexual abuse, which led to fears of infiltration and false accusations--it was dissolved.
In 1981, Fr. Paul studied at Weston School of Theology at Boston College. He was awarded a Doctor of Ministry in Spiritual Direction in 1982. His doctoral thesis is titled "Communication Ministry for Gay Catholic Priests and Religious: Group Spiritual Direction Through the Written Word."
Fr. Paul's ministry of almost sixty years has been mainly to the marginalized in society and the Church--those who are dying in hospice programs, those who need counseling, those in prison, and LGBTQ people and their allies. He was the Spiritual Care Director for the Visiting Nurse Service Home Hospice Program in New Your City in the early 1980's founded Austin Center for Counseling in the Bronx in the 1990's and served as a prison chaplain from 2004-2017 in The Philadelphia Jail. During the earlier period of this time on a leave of absence, he was in relationship with a few men quietly and struggled with the question of celibacy. He eventually decided to remain within the religious order and his religious vows.
Fr. Paul has written many articles that were published in mainly Catholic publications. 1995, he authored a memoir, Let Someone Hold You: The Journey of a Hospice Priest (Crossroad) which won The Christopher Award and the National Catholic Press Award. In 2015, he published The Black Wall of Silence, a novel about the sexual abuse crisis in the Church. When he had published his first book, the editor asked him to remove a reference to himself as a gay priest because it was thought that this would detract from the focus of the book—on dealing with death. Paul reluctantly complied but started writing a memoir of his life as a gay priest. Thirty years later, this resulted in the publication of Why I Remain a Gay Catholic: A Spiritual-Sexual Journey (2025, Paulist Press). He was awarded the St. Augustine Medal at the 2025 graduation ceremony of Monsignor Bonner High School.
Fr. Paul Morrissey presently lives and prays with his Augustinian Community at St. Augustine Parish in Old City, Philadelphia. He continues to write, to offer spiritual direction and celebrate Mass there--and for the Dignity Chapter in Philadelphia--for 53 years now. As well as his blood family and his Augustinian friar-brothers, Fr. Paul credits the Dignity group and very dear friends for teaching him to love himself as God loves each one of us.
As his family prayed around the table after dinner each night when he was a boy, "May we all find our true vocation and have the courage to follow it."
(This biographical statement written by Mark Bowman from an interview with Paul Morrissey
and was edited by Morrissey.)
Biography Date: July 2026
“Fr. Paul Morrissey | Profile”, LGBTQ Religious Archives Network, accessed July 29, 2026, https://lgbtqreligiousarchives.org/profiles/paul-morrissey.