It was a walk down the street that led to a priestly vocation.

The year was 1974, and Father Timothy Sullivan, CSP, had just graduated from Notre Dame University with a degree in political science. He was working in the senate clerk’s office at the Massachusetts State House in his native Boston when he discovered the Paulist Center located right down the street.

“One day, I just walked in there and had a great experience,” said Father Sullivan, 59. “I had no idea who the Paulists were.”

And so it began. Father Sullivan joined the center on a Sunday, and was chosen for the parish council at the social just committee meeting held the next day.

“No one else wanted to do it,” Father Sullivan chuckled, noting he also took part in the center’s Lay Ministry Training Institute.

The young Father Sullivan had discerned a call to the priesthood since his days at Xaverian Brothers High School, where he graduated in 1968, but his vocation “really got spurred on” at the Paulist Center by how the community “opened the windows of Vatican II” through its spirit of invitation, lay empowerment, welcome and hospitality.

“It was a breath of fresh air,” he said. “They had a really healthy sense of church. The Paulists I met impressed me with their integrity and spirit of service.”

The future Paulist joined a dozen other men entering the community’s novitiate at Mount Paul in Oak Ridge, N.J., in the summer of 1979. His novitiate experience included interning with the Catholic Worker Movement.

“I had a great year and met a lot of great people,” he said.

Father Sullivan then moved to Washington, D.C., to pursue his master of divinity degree at Washington Theological Union, which he described as “another great experience.” Good Shepherd Church in New York City, the St. Thomas More Newman Center at Ohio State University in Columbus, OH, and St. Patrick Church in Memphis all welcomed Father Sullivan as a theology intern during those years.

Most influential, however, was his involvement in a church-based community organization center in Anacostia, Va., right outside of Washington, D.C. Father Sullivan’s ministry there would not only be developed into his master’s thesis, but come full circle many years later.

Father Sullivan was ordained a Paulist Father on May 11, 1985, at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle in New York City. 

During his priesthood, he has served at St. Leo the Great Church in Houston; the St. Thomas More Newman Center in Columbus, OH; St. Paul the Apostle in New York City; and St. Patrick Church in Memphis.

In July, 2016, he began his latest ministry assignment as associate pastor of Immaculate Conception Church in Knoxville, TN.