Father Peter Pearson

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Born and raised in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, Peter is the eldest son in an Irish Catholic family.

He began to paint Byzantine icons at the age of twelve and headed off to seminary two weeks after high school graduation. Graduating from Saint Pius X Seminary and the University of Scranton in 1979 with a B.S. in Human Services with a minor in Philosophy /Theology, he went to Saint John's School of Theology in Boston, Ma, for graduate studies in Theology.

After a pastoral year in a parish near Scranton (1980-81), he decided to take some time off to "grow up."  Peter moved to Washington, DC, in 1981. He and worked at Federal Document Retrieval as a researcher, then at a large New York law firm's office as a litigation and immigration paralegal, and finally started his own company which dealt with the embassies representing the needs of American citizens.

While in Washington, he studied iconography with a Russian icon painter in Bethesda, Md., design at the International Institute of Design, and theology at Georgetown University.

In 1991 he sold his business and left Washington for Saint Vincent Archabbey, a Benedictine monastery in Latrobe, Pa.  A year later, he took monastic vows and resumed seminary work, completing his M. Div. (magna cum laude), with a heavy concentration in liturgical studies and design of spaces for worship, in 1995. Around the same time, he left the monastic enclosure and began to work as a full-time iconographer and teacher of Byzantine icon painting.

Peter has studied under several master iconographers from the United States and Canada and now teaches throughout the United States. In 2004, his book, A Brush With God, was published. His icons grace the walls of churches, monasteries, seminaries, and private homes around the world.

He was ordained a priest in 1996 and served the Dignity Community of Pittsburgh (GLBT Catholics) as its pastor until leaving Pittsburgh in 2005. He was received into the Episcopal Church by Bishop Paul Marshall in the Diocese of Bethlehem in 2004. Peter Pearson now serves as the priest-in-charge at Saint Philip's Episcopal Church in New Hope, Pennsylvania.  He continues to paint, teach, write, and consult on the design of worship spaces.