Clergy & Staff
Fr. Eric Bergman, Pastor
Fr. Bergman was born in Tennessee and raised as an Episcopalian in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He studied German and International Affairs at James Madison University, and after graduation in 1991 he was briefly employed by a law firm in London, England. Upon returning to Pennsylvania he worked with mentally handicapped adults, with the urban elderly as a local coordinator for Project CARE, and finally as Youth Director at the Episcopal Cathedral in Bethlehem. In 1994 he began studies at Yale Divinity School, where he received his Master of Divinity in 1997 and was ordained to the Episcopal priesthood the same year. He served as curate at St. Luke's Episcopal Church in downtown Scranton until 1999, and then as rector of the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd until the end of 2004. Perceiving a call to be reconciled to the Catholic Church, in consultation with Bishop Joseph Martino and Auxiliary Bishop John Dougherty, Fr. Bergman renounced his Episcopal priesthood and founded the St. Thomas More Society in January 2005, whereby he and half of his former parishioners at Good Shepherd were received into the Catholic Church as an intact congregation, under the care of Msgr. William Feldcamp at St. Clare Catholic Church. Fr. Bergman was ordained to the Catholic Priesthood under the Pastoral Provision of Pope John Paul II on April 21, 2007. In accordance with Pope Benedict XVI's 2009 apostolic constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus, Fr. Bergman became the first Priest incardinated in the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter in May 2012, concurrently with the St. Thomas More Society's erection as St. Thomas More Catholic Parish. As a former Anglican clergyman with special dispensation according to the Pastoral Provision, Fr. Bergman is married; he and his wife, Kristina, are blessed with ten children.
Paul Campbell, Music Director & Administrator
Paul Campbell was raised as an Episcopalian in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, singing in the Choir of Men and Boys at the Episcopal Cathedral alongside boyhood friend (now Fr.) Eric Bergman. He received his Bachelor's Degree in Sacred Music from Westminster Choir College, Princeton, in 1996, and a Master's Degree in Choral Conducting from the Indiana University School of Music, Bloomington, in 1999. Since then he has overseen music ministries at several of the country's most notable flagship churches, including House of Hope Presbyterian Church, St. Paul, Minnesota; the Cathedral of Saint Paul, St. Paul, Minnesota; and Truro Anglican Church, Fairfax, Virginia. Paul and his family were reconciled to the Catholic Church while still serving at Truro on the Easter Vigil of 2008. That same day he received a call from Fr. Bergman indicating that St. Thomas More had raised sufficient funds to hire a Music Director and Administrator, which duties he assumed after moving to Scranton during the summer of 2008. Paul and his wife, Sandy, are blessed with six children. Sandy and Fr. Bergman's wife, Kristina, are sisters, thus completing a ministry team based not just on complementary gifts, but rooted in longstanding friendship and marriage as well.
Judy Sanderson, Organist
Judy Sanderson grew up in Wichita Falls, Texas, where she studied piano, sang in her Presbyterian church choir, and accompanied hymns for Sunday school classes. She attended Trinity University in San Antonio, where she majored in music with a double concentration in voice and organ. After graduating in 1961, she acquired a second major from Trinity in English and then attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where she received a Masters in English. While in Madison she became an Episcopalian, embracing the Anglo-Catholic life of the Episcopal Diocese of Milwaukee. While there she also met her future husband, Don Sanderson, who soon returned to his native Northeast Pennsylvania to work with an architectural firm in Wilkes-Barre. After their marriage in 1964, Judy taught English at King’s College for several years before her two sons were born, and again as an adjunct while her sons were in high school. She sang in the choir at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Wilkes-Barre, where she was a member for almost forty years. During that time she did not play the organ. In 2003, the Sandersons became members of Church of the Good Shepherd in Scranton, where Fr. Eric Bergman was Rector, and were part of the original group who were confirmed together as Catholics, forming the St. Thomas More Society in 2005. Until Paul Campbell’s arrival as music director, she first provided piano accompaniment for hymns and service music, then after the move to St. Anthony’s revived the organ skill that had lain dormant for forty years.
The Most Rev. Steven J. Lopes, Bishop
Though our church is located in Scranton, Pennsylvania - and any Catholic is free to participate fully in our worship, ministries, and community life - we are not a parish of the Diocese of Scranton, but of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter, essentially a nationwide diocese for congregations like ours (formerly Anglican parishes that have come into the Catholic Church as intact congregations) that overlaps all the territorial dioceses in the United States. Just as we have a nationwide Diocese (or more properly, Ordinariate), we also have a Bishop whose jurisdiction overlaps that of all the other Catholic Bishops in the U.S. to oversee our parish and all the others like it. A wealth of information about our first Bishop, Steven J. Lopes, is here.
Pope Francis, Supreme Head of the Catholic Church
Pope Francis, the first Pope of the Americas and the first Jesuit Pope, was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio to Italian parents in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1936. After earning a degree in Chemistry he entered seminary and was ordained a priest in 1969. He became Archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998 and Cardinal in 2001. He was elected Pope by the College of Cardinals in the papal conclave on March 13, 2013. In his papacy he has demonstrated qualities consistent with his vocation prior to his election: a concern for the poor, bridge-building through dialogue, and a humility and simplicity of life that has led him to eschew some of the trappings tradtionally associated with the papacy. A more detailed biography of the Holy Father is available here.