Father Tim McCabe, SJ, 54, is from the Detroit suburb of Ferndale, Mich. Always drawn to the poor and marginalized, he became involved with the Detroit peace community and the Catholic Worker Movement as a young man. In addition to serving as the director of a refugee resettlement project, Fr. McCabe also helped repair houses for Detroit’s inner-city poor and served meals in a soup kitchen.

On a humanitarian aid mission to El Salvador, he first met the Jesuits, and those relationships helped propel his decision to attend the Jesuits’ University of Detroit Mercy, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in political science. His next job was with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, where he served as the JVC’s Midwest director for 12 years. His work there helped Fr. McCabe discover Ignatian spirituality, and it had a tremendous impact not only on how he prayed but how he understood the world.

In 2005, after many years of discerning a vocation to the Society of Jesus, he answered God’s call and joined the Jesuits. As a novice, he worked in a hospice for the homeless in San Francisco before heading to Loyola University Chicago for advanced philosophy studies. Missioned next to Loyola High School in Detroit, Fr. McCabe served as the school’s development director and then spent two years working in Chicago with the Ignatian Spirituality Project, which provides retreats to homeless men and women. At the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University in Berkeley, Calif., he earned a Master of Divinity degree while serving as a deacon at St. Agnes Catholic Church in San Francisco. He currently serves as the executive director of the Pope Francis Center, a warming center at Ss. Peter & Paul Jesuit Church in Detroit.