Welcome, Fr. Peter Volz!

Fr. Peter Jacob Volz was born and raised in Orange County, California. He has a B.A., M.A., and an M.Div. Before entering the Seminary in 2012, he was a barista at Starbucks for two years. He comes from a “pretty big family,” the sixth of nine children! Fr. Peter recalls always going to Church and being raised in the Faith. When he was thirteen, Fr. Peter joined the Neocatechumenal Way, which is an itinerancy of Catholic formation similar to the R.C.I.A. which emphasizes growing in Faith in small communities. Stressing the importance of being in a Faith community at a young age, Fr. Peter notes it “was the best thing for me as a teen in southern California, because it helped me to resist a lot (but certainly not all) of the temptations that attack all of us.” At the age of 21, Fr. Peter was given the opportunity to go help a team of missionaries working in Parishes in Utah and New Mexico, and felt the Call to become a Missionary Priest. After six months, he was sent to the Archdiocesan Missionary Seminary of the Archdiocese of Newark, located in Kearny.

Fr. Peter was Ordained a Priest after ten years. He served as a Transitional Deacon at the Church of the Nativity in Midland Park, and was assigned to St. John the Apostle Church in Linden after being newly Ordained in 2022. Within that Parish assignment, he also has been part-time Campus Minister at Kean University.