50 Years as a Jesuit
Father Kevin Cullen, SJ, celebrates his 50th Jubilee as a Jesuit in 2025. His service as a Jesuit has most recently included pastoral and administrative work as the Country Director for the Jesuit Refugee Service in Thailand. Father Cullen also held administrative roles in the Society of Jesus and at Rockhurst and Regis Universities. Currently, he serves on the Programs Committee for the Ignatian Spirituality Center of Kansas City.
Born in St. Louis, Fr. Cullen entered the Jesuit Novitiate in Denver in 1975, pronouncing first vows in 1977. He completed his studies at Saint Louis University and at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, where he earned a Master of Divinity in 1986. He was ordained a priest the same year.
Father Cullen’s years of Jesuit ministry have involved service in the United States, Belize, Africa, Canada and Thailand. During tertianship in Australia, a time of Jesuit reflection and prayer over the founding documents of the Society of Jesus, Fr. Cullen discerned a call to serve in the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) in Africa. He was assistant country director for JRS-Eastern Africa in Uganda from 1995 to 1997 and would later serve as the Country Director for JRS-Thailand from 2021 to 2022. He has also been involved with L’Arche, a Catholic organization serving adults with intellectual disabilities, in Toronto and Ottawa, Canada, as well as in St. Louis.
Recent years have led Fr. Cullen to pastoral ministry at St. Matthew the Apostle Church in St. Louis, from 2018 to 2021, and to retreat ministry. In 2022 and 2023, he was a retreat and spiritual director at Sacred Heart Jesuit Retreat House in Sedalia, Colorado. He now assists program development at the Marillac Center, the retreat and spirituality center of the Sisters of Charity in Leavenworth, Kansas. In addition to retreats and days of prayer, he also offers spiritual direction.
Fr. Kevin Cullen’s Reflection on his 50th Jubilee
I begin in gratitude: for today and for these years of ministry. I thank my parents and family for their support of my initial desires to be of service in our Church. Their continued love and prayers offered me the personal freedom to listen to different calls and opportunities given by the Holy Spirit.
I am thankful for the Society of Jesus and the way it provides for me to live and learn about the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. The “fifth week” of integrating the retreat movements with people I have been sent to serve and the institutions I have served in, has been both personally and structurally transformative. These include teaching in traditional settings like at St. John’s College in Belize City, Regis Jesuit High School in Denver or Rockhurst University in Kansas City; and in untraditional classrooms like Jesuit Refugee Service in refugee camps in Uganda and Thailand. These include parish and pastoral ministries like in l’Arche communities in St. Louis and Kansas City and others around the world and supporting lay people to act in faith upon their call to administer pastoral organizations and Church structures.
I have been privileged to support the Universal Apostolic Preferences and the local needs of the Jesuit mission. Listening within internal formation programs and province offices, as well as in external retreat ministries has helped me to accompany others in being reconciled to the tender mercy of God in their lives.
The Jesuit mission within our Church is extensive and strong. I was blessed by the invitation to join the Society of Jesus, grow in her Ignatian charism and to act in effective missions that are transformative for me, for others and for our world.
In gratitude … I say thanks for what has been, and I look forward for what is yet to come! Amen.
