If you were to visit Father Peter Zalewski at his parish in Tallahassee, Florida, you would find a busy and beloved pastor, tending to the activities of his church community and the local Catholic school—the largest primary school in the diocese.
One might not realize that this pastor, pictured below, with many responsibilities also serves as a general in the Air Force chaplain corps. On his one day off a week, he won’t be playing golf under the Florida sun or resting in the rectory. Instead, he’ll be tending to meetings at the Pentagon or elsewhere in Washington DC, because he now serves as the primary advisor to the Chief of the National Guard Bureau on religious, ethical and moral issues.
Father Zalewski’s recent promotion to one-star general will have him serving members of both the Air and Army National Guard. The promotion ceremony on December 14, 2023, was the culmination of his nearly 40-year life in the military, which began in 1984 as a cadet at the U.S. Air Force Academy.
In the early 1990s he deployed in major military operations, including serving as an intelligence officer in Operation Desert Storm in the first Gulf War. Not only did he follow in the footsteps of his father who served two tours in Vietnam, but he also followed the encouragement of his mother who helped him appreciate the meaning of service in the Armed Forces.
Dual vocation
The Florida native eventually heard the call to pursue priesthood instead of Air Force pilot training, so in 1992, he became a seminarian of the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee. During that period, Catholic Extension Society funded his education. But, even as he was being led to serve God, the call to serve his country never went away. As a new seminarian, he became an Air Force chaplain candidate.
After ordination in 1997, he began serving as a parish priest in his diocese and as a military reserve chaplain at bases in the Florida Panhandle. He would eventually be deployed again in 2008 as a “wing chaplain” to Al-Dhafra Airbase in Abu Dhabi, serving military personnel supporting our country’s difficult operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is pictured below in uniform
In his remarks at his promotion ceremony, Fr. Zalewski thanked his parishioners at Blessed Sacrament in Tallahassee where he is currently pastor, as well as St. Dominic in Panama City, Florida, where he was previously pastor, for always supporting his dual responsibilities.
“Thank you for your support,” he told them, “We have to protect those who protect us. So, thank you for allowing me to do that. That means a lot to me.”
As a general, Father Zalewski will provide guidance and programs directing guard chaplain personnel and supporting Army and Air guardsmen.
The past 20 years of U.S. history have been marked by long wars abroad and many natural disasters in our homeland, which have demanded a great deal of sacrifice from military personnel and their families. While many of us can too easily forget their sacrifices, Father Zalewski cannot.
He knows that the many sacrifices of our service members have created a toll—physical, mental, and spiritual. Father Zalewski recalls his visits to military bases over these past years where he would encounter young soldiers wearing prosthetics, reminding him of what they gave on the battlefield. More troublesome, still, are the wounds that are not visible. Father Zalewski laments that despite many efforts within the services, suicides among military personnel are not decreasing and more needs to be done to stem this tide.
Giving back
Father Zalewski feels that he has been given so much in life through the generosity of others, and he wants to spend his life paying forward those blessings. For example, when he was born at a Navy hospital, he urgently needed multiple blood transfusions to survive. He said that the young, enlisted servicemen at the hospital literally gave him their blood so that he might have life.
He is also mindful of the Catholic Extension Society donors who supported his seminarian education all those years ago. For the past ten years he has served on Catholic Extension Society’s mission committee, an advisory committee to our board that helps Catholic Extension Society increase its impact and awareness around the country. He’s pictured below with the mission committee in 2019 on a trip to the Coachella Valley in the Extension-supported Diocese of San Bernardino, California.
He has also involved his parish in raising financial support for various Extension initiatives over the years. He said, “It’s been an honor to serve my country in the military and an honor to serve the Catholic Church in America through Catholic Extension Society’s mission committee.”
He went on to acknowledge the impact Catholic Extension Society has had on service members from the peripheries of our country.
I see that many of our service members come from rural communities — so Extension is a direct contributor to their spiritual well-being and strength.”
While Father Zalewski, pictured below at the ceremony, now possesses the highest rank in the military of any Catholic priest, he is not driven by the title or the power, but by duty.
As a general, he will serve people regardless of their religious affiliation, while also mindful that roughly a quarter of all active-duty military personnel are Catholic. His job will be to ensure that these young, self-sacrificing men and women, who have given so much to our country, have the spiritual care they need.
Hopefully, Father Zalewski’s own life story and example will be an inspiration to them as much as it is to us.
