Australian Jesuit Matthew Pinson was ordained to the priesthood on 8 August at the Church of Saint Mary, North Sydney, by Most Reverend Patrick O’Regan, Archbishop of Adelaide.
The ordination took place on the Feast of St Mary MacKillop, whose trust in providence despite misunderstanding and hardship, Archbishop O’Regan noted, exemplifies what every priest must learn: that “the supply is not ours, and that is precisely why it does not run out”.
Fr Pinson’s formation journey has taken him from his country town of Cowra, New South Wales—where the archbishop first met him and his family at St Raphael’s Parish in the mid-1980s—to doctoral studies in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and soon to the Vatican Observatory.
Even as a Year 12 student, he represented Australia at the International Physics Olympiad in Korea. He went on to study physics at the Australian National University, where involvement in the Catholic chaplaincy and archdiocesan youth ministry deepened his faith and sense of vocation.
He later moved to the United States to complete a PhD in physics at MIT. There, a close‑knit community of Catholic graduate students and the example of senior researchers who saw their greatest impact in mentoring others helped shift his focus from personal achievement to serving others. Pinson has said his call to the priesthood came “almost out of the blue” while praying at St Clement’s Eucharistic Shrine in Boston, but now feels like a natural development toward a life centred on relationships rather than accomplishments.
After a year as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago, he entered the Jesuit novitiate at Mount Druitt, Sydney in 2016 and made First Vows in 2018. He studied philosophy in Melbourne, served at Newman College and in the remote Aboriginal community of Wadeye, then pursued theology at Boston College, where his thesis examined the impact of artificial intelligence on Christian spirituality.
In his homily, Archbishop O’Regan noted that Fr Pinson brings to the priesthood “a mind trained on the galaxies and the deep structure of the universe” and continues a long Jesuit tradition in which the study of the heavens is a form of prayer. “The scriptures remind us that the heavens declare the glory of God. Matthew, you have read that in its original language – in equations and starlight,” the archbishop said.
Speaking after his ordination, Fr Pinson thanked family, friends, and the wider faith community for sustaining him in his vocation. “Many of you here in the church have played a very special and personal role in my life of faith, starting of course with my parents Louise and David,” he said. “But even if today is the first time you’ve set eyes on me, I want you to be assured how much the faith of the people of God is an important witness strengthening me in my journey as a Jesuit, and now as a priest.”
Fr Pinson is now undertaking postdoctoral research in stellar astrophysics at Monash University in preparation for an assignment at the Vatican Observatory in Castel Gandolfo, Italy.
All Photos by Daryl Charles Photography
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