Redemptorists elect new provincial, leadership team

The Redemptorists of the Baltimore Province have elected a new leadership team to guide the province through the next four years. Election results were announced Nov. 28, and the newly elected men will begin their term Jan. 12, 2015.

Father Paul Borowski will be the new provincial superior, succeeding Father Kevin Moley. Father Gerard Knapp will serve as vicar provincial, and Father Matthew Allman will be the second consultor.

Father Moley, 71, a native of Brooklyn, served as provincial from 2002 through 2005 and from 2011 through 2014.

Father Borowski is pastor of St. Clement Parish in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Father Knapp is rector of the Redemptorist community at Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish in Baltimore. Father Allman is parochial vicar of St. Peter the Apostle Parish in Philadelphia.

The outgoing vicar provincial and second consultor are Fathers Frank Jones and Thomas Travers, respectively.

The men in these three positions form the Redemptorists’ ordinary provincial council. Along with the five-member extraordinary provincial council (EPC), they manage the province’s missionary activities and implement its policy and governance decisions. A new extraordinary provincial council will be elected in January.

Redemptorists of the Baltimore Province maintain headquarters in Brooklyn but have retained the name Baltimore Province” to honor their beginnings as the congregation’s first independent American province in that city in 1850.

Father Paul Borowski, C.Ss.R.
Provincial Superior

Father Borowski, 54, was born and grew up in Baltimore. He professed vows in 1982 and was ordained in 1987. He has master’s degrees in religious education and divinity from Mount St. Alphonsus in Esopus, N.Y., and Washington Theological Union in Washington, D.C., respectively. In 1992 Father Borowski earned a licentiate in philosophy from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium.

He has served at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish in Ellicott City, Md.; and since August 2008 at St. Clement Church in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

He taught in the philosophy department of St. John’s University in Queens, N.Y., with a specialty in business ethics. Father Borowski served as assistant director of formation from 1994 to 2002, then director of formation till 2008. He was elected to the province’s extraordinary provincial council in 2005 and re-elected in 2008 and 2011.

He has been involved in youth ministry for decades. During summers from 1995 to 2007 and 2009 to 2013 he has taken young people to work on Habitat for Humanity projects. From 2001 to 2007 he served as Life Teen priest for St. Martin of Tours Parish in Bethpage, N.Y., and he attended World Youth Days in 1992 and 2002.

Father Gerard Knapp, C.Ss.R.
Vicar Provincial

Father Knapp, 65, was born and raised in Baltimore. He professed vows in 1968 and was ordained a priest in 1975. He has master’s degrees in religious education and divinity from Mount St. Alphonsus in Esopus.

In 1984 he received a licentiate in sacred theology from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and for seven years taught theology, liturgy, and biblical Greek. He has served as the province’s assistant procurator and procurator, and he earned a master’s in business administration from St. John’s University.

In 2008 Father Knapp was named rector and pastor of his home parish, Sacred Heart of Jesus in Baltimore. When the parish merged with the predominantly Spanish-speaking St. Michael the Archangel Parish in 2011, a bilingual pastor was named, but Father Knapp remained rector of the Redemptorist community.

Father Matthew Allman, C.Ss.R.
Second Consultor

Father Allman, 41, is a native of Washington, D.C., and was raised in Maryland. He professed vows as a Redemptorist in 1994 and completed his undergraduate studies at St. John’s University in 1996. In 2000 he earned his master’s in divinity from Washington Theological Union and was ordained.

Father Allman’s first assignment was in Vieux Fort, St. Lucia, followed by two years of study at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. In 2011 he earned master’s degrees in American church history and library and information science at the Catholic University of America.

He served at Mission Church (The Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help) in Boston from 2004 to 2008 and is currently a parochial vicar at St. Peter the Apostle Church (the National Shrine of St. John Neumann) in Philadelphia. There he is coordinating plans for moving the province’s archives from Brooklyn.

In addition to the papers of St. John Neumann–the first person to join the Redemptorists in the New World and first American man to be declared a saint–the archives contain rare books and manuscripts dating to the 15th century as well as one of the world’s richest collections on the Shroud of Turin, believed to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ.

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