Fr. Jonathon was born and raised in Torrance, CA and formed by his family and local Catholic Schools (St. Lawrence Martyr Elementary, Bishop Montgomery High School). He earned a BS in Biochemistry at The Catholic University of America in 2008 with the intention of pursuing a medical degree but instead followed the “tug in his heart” to discern diocesan priesthood. He graduated St. John’s Seminary with an MDiv and MA in Theology and was ordained for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in 2015. After ministering at St. John the Baptist in Baldwin Park and The Queen of Angels Center for Priestly Formation, he was sent to Rome for ongoing formation and earned an STL in Moral Theology at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross. He began serving as a faculty member at St. John’s in 2023 and is also finishing his doctoral thesis in moral theology on interior human formation according to the thought of Edith Stein (St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross). His academic interests include integral human formation in the Personalist School, Pope St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, Bioethics, and the New Evangelization.
