James Joseph Martin Jr. (born December 29, 1960) is an American Jesuit priest, writer, editor-at-large of America magazine, and the founder of Outreach.
Pope Francis appointed Martin as a consultant to the Secretariat for Communications at the Vatican in 2017. In July 2023, it was announced that Martin was among the people specifically invited by Francis to take part in the final phase meetings of the Synod on Synodality.
A New York Times Best-Selling author, Martin's books include The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life, Jesus: A Pilgrimage, and My Life with the Saints. He is a public speaker on Ignatian spirituality as inspired by Ignatius of Loyola.
Martin's public outreach to the LGBTQ+ community has drawn both support and criticism from within the Catholic Church.
Early life Martin was born on December 29, 1960 in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania. Although was raised catholic, he attended public schools and graduated Plymouth-Whitemarsh High School in 1978.
He enrolled as an at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business receiving his bachelors decree in economics in 1982. From there, Martin was employed at General Electric in New York City and later at GE Capital in Stamford, Connecticut.
Religious life Martin's corporate career changed after viewing a documentary on the life of Trappist monk Thomas Merton. At the recommendation of a priest, Martin consulted to some religious men at Fairfield University. Around 1987 Martin started getting "more and more miserable" and felt "trapped".
It took two years for Martin to act on joining religious life. Starting his two-year novitiate in the Jesuits' New England Province in boston, August 1988; Martin worked in various settings, including a hospital for the seriously ill in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a hospice for the sick and dying with Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity, an orphanage in Kingston, Jamaica, a Boston homeless shelter, and the Nativity Mission School, a Jesuit school for inner-city youth, in New York City.
After pronouncing his First Vows in 1990, Martin was sent to study philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. During this time he spent two years working in an outreach program for street-gang members in Chicago's housing projects, and with the homeless at a community center. In 1992, he earned an M.A. in philosophy from Loyola University Chicago.
From 1992 to 1994, for his "regency" assignment, Martin spent two years working with the Jesuit Refugee Service/East Africa in Nairobi, Kenya. During this time, he assisted East African refugees in starting small businesses and co-founded a refugee handicraft shop called The Mikono Centre, which is still operational as of 2026. He then returned to New York City to work as an associate editor at America magazine in New York City for one year.
Returning to the United States, Martin worked for America Magazine, following that he attended the Weston Jesuit School of Theology and received a M.Div. in 1998, later that year he was ordained a transitional deacon. The following year, on June 12, 1999, Martin was ordained as a Catholic priest and pronounced his Final Vows as a Jesuit on November 1, 2009.
Career
Following his ordination to the priesthood, Martin has written or edited more than a dozen books on religious and spiritual topics. He is a frequent commentator for CNN, NPR, Fox News Channel, Time magazine, The Huffington Post,Rev. James Martin, S.J The Huffington Post. and other news outlets, and has written several op-ed pieces and blogged for The New York Times, and is the editor-at-large of America magazine.
As of October 2021, Martin serves on the Board of Directors of Georgetown University. Pilgrimages At the recommendation of Drew Christiansen SJ, the then editor of America, Martin undertook a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, which he then chronicled in his book Jesus: A Pilgrimage. The book quickly became a New York Times bestseller and Christopher Award winner, and received positive reviews from a number of public figures including author Scott Hahn, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, and the Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Beginning in 2015, Martin has led a number of pilgrimages to the Holy Land with America Media, inspired by the book and visiting many of the religious sites described therein.
Television appearances On September 13, 2007, Martin appeared on Comedy Central's The Colbert Report to discuss Mother Teresa's fifty-year sense of abandonment by God which had much coverage in the media at the time. Martin appeared several more times on The Colbert Report, once to discuss Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the U.S. in April 2008, and again on February 23, 2009, to discuss how poverty (or, at least, reducing the importance one places on material goods) can bring one closer to God.
On March 18, 2010, Martin was invited to the program in the wake of Glenn Beck's suggestion that Catholics run away from priests who preach "social justice". Martin said that "social justice addresses the things that keep people poor" and "asks you why are these people poor." He added that "Christ asked us to work with the poor. ... In the Gospel of Matthew He says that the way that we're going to be judged at the end of our lives is not what church we prayed in or how we prayed but really ... how we treated the poor." On August 10, 2011, Martin appeared on The Colbert Report to discuss God's "approval rating" and to promote his book The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life. On November 9, 2011, he appeared once again to promote his book concerning humor and religion, Between Heaven and Mirth. On February 11, 2013, he went on the show to discuss the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI. On September 24, 2013, he was on the show, talking about an interview where Pope Francis said that love, compassion, and mercy are more important than the rules (within a subtext of Pope Francis washing the feet of criminals, wanting a more prominent role for women, saying atheists can be redeemed, not judging gays and lesbians, and that we cannot serve money and God at the same time), and introducing Metallica. On September 24, 2013, he appeared to discuss income inequality and the Pope's emphasis on economic justice and on the importance of caring for the poor.
Other activities Martin is a member of the LAByrinth Theater Company. His involvement with the 2005 stage production of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, written by Stephen Adly Guirgis, directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and featuring Sam Rockwell, John Ortiz, Eric Bogosian, and Callie Thorne, is the subject of Martin's book A Jesuit Off-Broadway: Center Stage with Jesus, Judas, and Life's Big Questions (Loyola Press, 2007). Publishers Weekly gave the book a starred review. Martin appeared as a priest, performing two baptisms, in Martin Scorsese's 2019 crime film The Irishman.
The Democratic National Convention asked Martin to deliver a closing prayer at their 2020 convention.
Building a Bridge (2017) and LGBTQ+ ministry Following the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting, Martin stated that he was "disappointed that more Catholic leaders did not offer support to the LGBT community" in the aftermath of the shooting, and started a series of lectures on how the Church could better minister to LGBT Catholics, which led to his book, Building a Bridge (2017).
In 2020, Martin addressed the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities (ACCU), with over three-fourths of the Associations' school presidents in attendance, urging them to take steps to promote inclusion. Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider, president of the ACCU, remarked that Martin was warmly received by "a new generation of Catholic college presidents" who reflect "the influence of Pope Francis". J.D. Flynn, editor-in-chief of EWTN-owned Catholic News Agency, contended that Martin presented in his address a "vision of the human person at odds with Catholic teaching". Flynn wrote that "every initiative" recommended by Martin, such as "Lavender graduation" or "L.G.B.T spiritualities, theologies, liturgies and safe spaces", was designed "to affirm the lie that sexual inclination or orientation is, in itself, identity".
In December 2023, when Pope Francis published the declaration Fiducia supplicans, that allowed priests to give non-liturgical blessings to same-sex couples, Martin, described the declaration as "a major step forward in the church's ministry to LGBTQ people" and demonstrated the church affirming same-sex couples' desire "for God's presence and help in their committed and loving relationships". The next day, he blessed the individuals of a same-sex union who had married at Judson Memorial Church, described by the individuals as a "progressive Protestant community".
In 2021, a documentary film about Martin's LGBT ministry, also called Building a Bridge, directed by Evan Mascagni and Shannon Post and with Martin Scorsese as executive producer, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City.
Martin's book, Building a Bridge (2017), was praised by several prelates, including Cardinals Robert McElroy, Kevin Farrell and Joseph Tobin. Tobin wrote that "in too many parts of our Church LGBT people have been made to feel unwelcome, excluded, and even shamed. Father Martin's brave, prophetic, and inspiring new book marks an essential step in inviting Church leaders to minister with more compassion, and in reminding LGBT Catholics that they are as much a part of our Church as any other Catholic." However, Martin's book also received criticism from some Catholics who successfully lobbied for many of his lectures at Catholic venues to be cancelled. In a critique of the book, Cardinal Robert Sarah described Martin as "one of the most outspoken critics of the Church's message with regard to sexuality". Martin himself lauded Sarah's column as "a step forward", since Sarah used the term "'L.G.B.T.', which a few traditionalist Catholics reject", rather than "persons with same-sex attraction" and other antiquated phrases.
In 2018, Cardinal Raymond Burke stated that Martin has "an 'open' and wrong position on homosexuality", and that he "is not coherent with the Church's teaching on homosexuality".
In a 2018 column, Martin wrote that he has never challenged the Church's teaching on homosexuality and never will. In 2018, Robert George, founder of the Witherspoon Institute, First Things contributor and co-author of What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense, argued that Catholics should accept that Martin does believe in the Church's teaching on homosexuality. In 2018, David Henderson on Witherspoon Institute's journal and Dan Hitchens on First Things each stressed that Martin had not "affirm[ed]" the teaching "as true". Journalist Frank Bruni said in The New York Times in 2019 that Martin did not "explicitly reject Church teaching" but rather questioned the language in the Catechism of the Catholic Church that describes homosexual attraction as "intrinsically disordered".