Fr. Matthew Pawlikowski was born and raised in New Jersey, the youngest of John & Rita’s seven children: five boys and two girls. He graduated from West Point in 1986 and was commissioned an Infantry officer. He served at Ft. Benning, Georgia; Uijeongbu (wee-jong-BOO), Korea; and Fort Bragg, North Carolina (home of the 82nd Airborne Division).

Ordained a priest in 1997, he was assigned for three years to St. Thomas the Apostle Parish in Bloomfield, where he served as chaplain to the Bloomfield Police Department and liaison to the town’s Ecumenical Pastors Association.

He re-entered active duty as an Army chaplain and immediately returned to Fort Bragg. While serving in Sinai, Egypt, as part of the Multinational Peacekeeping Force, he led over 40 pilgrimages to Mount Sinai, Cairo, and Israel. With the 20th Engineers Unit at Ft. Bragg, he provided support in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. While assigned to Kaiserslautern, Germany, he led congregations to the International Military Pilgrimage in Lourdes (twice), a pilgrimage to Poland (once), and hiked a personal pilgrimage on the final 70-mile portion of the Camino de Santiago de Compostela in Spain. At Fort Sill, Oklahoma, he led soldiers in 60-mile pilgrimages to Pilsen, Kansas—the hometown of Chaplain (Capt.) Fr. Emil Kapaun, Medal of Honor recipient from the Korean War and currently being considered for canonization as a Saint. Telling Fr. Kapaun’s story is a secondary vocation in his life.

In June 2015, he was assigned to West Point as the senior chaplain, the first Catholic to ever hold the position. He was the USMA Chaplain from 2015-2020 when he retired and took off the uniform but continued to serve as a Department of the Army civilian senior Chaplain to the United States Corps of Cadets. At the start of his tenure, Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) came to West Point and has been making an incredible impact. He has also served since 2015 as chaplain to the Army Football Team – Beat Navy! Father Pawlikowski has been awarded the Legion of Merit, Bronze Star, is a senior parachutist, and is Ranger qualified. 

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