Father Tad

Father Tad

Brief Bio

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D. earned his doctorate in neuroscience from Yale and did post-doctoral work at Harvard. He was ordained in 1999 as a priest for the diocese of Fall River, MA, and currently serves as Senior Ethicist at The National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia.

Full Bio

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D. currently serves as Senior Ethicist at The National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia. Fr. Tad is a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts. He writes and speaks widely on bioethics and medical ethics. Since 2001, he has given several hundred presentations and invited lectures, and participated in debates and roundtables on contemporary bioethics throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe.

He has taught bioethics classes for seminarians at St. John's Seminary in Boston, Pope St. John XXIII Seminary in Weston, Massachusetts, Holy Apostles College and Seminary in Cromwell, Connecticut, St. Bernard's School of Ministry and Theology in Rochester, New York, Kenrick-Glennon Seminary in St. Louis, St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Philadelphia, and the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and served as Professor of Bioethics at the University of Mary in Bismarck, ND

As an undergraduate Fr. Tad earned degrees in philosophy, biochemistry, molecular cell biology, and chemistry, and did laboratory research on hormonal regulation of the immune response. He later earned a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Yale University, where he focused on cloning genes for neurotransmitter transporters which are expressed in the brain. He worked for several years as a molecular biologist at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School. Father Tad studied for 5 years in Rome at both the Gregorian University and the Lateran University, where he did advanced work in dogmatic theology and in bioethics, examining the question of delayed ensoulment of the human embryo.

He writes a monthly newspaper column on bioethics that is nationally syndicated to more than 30 diocesan newspapers in the U.S., and which has also been carried by newspapers in England, Poland and Australia.

He has testified before members of the Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Virginia and Oregon State Legislatures during deliberations over stem cell research and cloning. In 2020, he was appointed to the National Institutes of Health Fetal Tissue Research Ethics Advisory Board. He has done commentaries for numerous media outlets, including NBC Nightly News, CNN International, ABC World News Tonight, National Public Radio, the Wall Street Journal, the Dallas Morning News, and the New York Times.