Father Matthew Allman, C.Ss.R.

Father Matt 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.