George Williams, SJ
George Williams, SJ was born in New Haven, CT and graduated from Syracuse University in 1979 with a dual degree in Political Science and Communications. He served 5 years as an Air Force Officer in Alaska, Germany and Saudi Arabia. He left the Air Force in 1984 to join the Jesuit Volunteer Corps and spent a year in Nome, AK working as the rock show DJ and news editor for KNOM, a Jesuit-founded radio station serving the people of Western Alaska. It was in Alaska that he met Jesuits for the first time and was inspired by them to join the Society of Jesus. After Nome, he returned to Boston and entered the Society in 1987.
After vows, he studied philosophy at Gonzaga University in Spokane for two years and then went to Brazil for his regency assignment where he worked in a poor community in Northeastern Brazil.
He felt called to work in prison ministry, so when he returned to Boston in 1993 he went to volunteer at the Boston City Jail and was immediately hired as their Catholic Chaplain. He has been engaged in prison ministry in one form or another ever since.
While working in the Boston jail system he earned an MSW from Boston College and then went on to graduate theology studies at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology (now Boston College School of Theology and Ministry), in Cambridge, Mass., where he received his master's degree in divinity (M.Div.) and a MA in Spiritual Direction in 2004, the same year he was ordained to the priesthood. While in theology studies, he worked as a counselor at The Bridge House in Framingham, MA, a faith-based halfway house for ex-prisoners.
Following ordination, he worked 5 years in the MA state prison system as the Catholic Chaplain at MCI-Concord. He began a doctoral program in Criminology at Northeastern University in 2007 in Boston. He was offered the Chaplaincy at San Quentin State Prison in CA, where he has worked since 2011. While working at San Quentin, he researched, wrote and defended his doctoral thesis: “Resisting Burnout: Correctional Staff Spirituality and Resilience,“ earning his Ph.D. in April 2017. He continues his work in San Quentin and lives at the University of San Francisco Jesuit Community. He has an appointment as a Fellow at the Lane Center for Catholic Social Thought and The Ignatian Tradition at USF. He is a founding member of the Catholic Prison Ministry Coalition, established in 2018.
