Born on January 21, 1945, in the Bronx, New York, Fr. Thomas Hoffman, SJ, this year celebrates 60 years as a Jesuit. A graduate of Jesuit High School of Tampa, Father Hoffman has devoted his ministry to Jesuit secondary education, campus ministry and pastoral ministry.

Father Hoffman entered the former New Orleans Province of the Society of Jesus on July 30, 1964, at the Jesuit novitiate in Grand Coteau, Louisiana, and pronounced first vows two years later. He was ordained a priest on May 29, 1976, at Sacred Heart Church in Tampa. His first pastoral assignment took him to Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama, where he served as director of campus ministries. He professed his final vows on April 22, 1983, at Spring Hill College.

Father Hoffman returned to Jesuit Tampa during his regency from 1970 to 1973, and later as a teacher from 1983 to 1984. In 1984, he was missioned to Jesuit High School in New Orleans as a theology teacher and chaplain, where he would serve until 2000. At Jesuit, he also supported the soccer and baseball teams as well as the student council and drama society as chaplain and moderator.

Since 2001, Fr. Hoffman has served in several pastoral assignments at parishes and college campuses. He was a parish assistant at St. Joseph Church in Long Beach, California, from 2001 to 2002 before returning to New Orleans in 2002 as pastor of St. Thomas the Apostle Church and director of the University of New Orleans Newman Center until 2008. He then moved to Alamogordo, New Mexico, where he was the associate pastor and later the pastor of St. Jude Parish from 2008 to 2021. In May 2021, Fr. Hoffman moved to the St. Alphonsus Rodriguez Pavilion in Grand Coteau, where he remained until moving in October 2023 to St. Ignatius Hall in Florissant, Missouri, where he continues to pray for the Church and the Society.

Father Hoffman earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and sociology from Loyola University New Orleans in 1970. He earned a Master of Divinity from Regis College in Toronto, Ontario, and a licentiate in theology from Immaculate Conception College in Montreal in 1976, and a Master of Theological Studies from Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1978.