In August 2004, New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey, then 47 and a devout Catholic, stood before a reporter to discuss a career-destroying political scandal. Joined him were his wife, Dina Matos, and his parents, Jack McGreevey, a former Marine Corps drill instructor, and his mother, Veronica, a nurse.
In a typical story like this, politicians offer no remorse, vow to keep fighting and use their families as props amid allegations of corruption, but McGreevey took a more humble tone.
He added the sentence that would become the opening line of his future obituary, revealing a truth he had hidden until that moment.
“I’m a gay American,” McGreevey said, announcing that he would step down as governor that fall. The five most famous words of McGreevey’s political career came as he confessed his guilt over the appointment of an Israeli national, Goran Sippel, to the state’s top security position. The press conference came after Sippel had threatened to sue the governor for sexual harassment.
McGreevey hopes those five words won’t be his last in politics. Two decades later, he’s in the midst of a personal comeback that includes a renewed connection to his Catholic faith, which he says he attributes in part to Pope Francis. His journey is evidence that American life can have a second act, one that tests voters’ forgiveness and memory.
He announced his return to politics by running for mayor in 2025 in Jersey City, a city on the Hudson River at the foot of the Statue of Liberty. Jersey City, population 292,000, is both a glittering metropolis favored by Wall Street traders who snapped up condos, and a poor, immigrant-minority town where McGreevey’s grandparents first arrived as Irish immigrants before moving to the suburbs.
Twenty years later, the McGreevey affair may seem relatively minor to voters who have endured the Trump era. But that wasn’t the case in 2004. Just a few years after New Jerseyans had watched the World Trade Center collapse, terrorism was a top concern across the capital region, and the office of the governor’s alleged male lover (he denies the relationship) was too important for someone with questionable qualifications.
McGreevey broke his marriage vows at a time when Americans were more skeptical of LGBTQ people in politics: That year, President George W. Bush was re-elected in part on a pledge to oppose same-sex marriage.
McGreevey forged ahead. He left politics, earned a theology degree from the Episcopal General Theological Seminary in New York City, and applied to be ordained in the Episcopal Church but was rejected. Out of sight, he heads New Jersey Reentry, a nonprofit dedicated to reintegrating drug addicts and ex-prisoners into society.
In many ways, life as governor has been smooth sailing, but McGreevey said in a recent phone interview that there have been struggles.
He recalls his seminary experience as just an attempt to find shelter from the storm, but it became much more than that: “I thought seminary would help me understand my shame and embarrassment. It was an amazing journey, and I’m forever grateful,” he said.
Once at the top of New Jersey’s political hustle, Mr. McGreevey has fallen from the heights of the governor’s mansion to the very bottom. As part of his seminary training, he worked at a facility for released prisoners in Harlem and at the former Cabrini Nursing and Rehabilitation Center on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, where he overcame his own hardships and learned about those of others.
The next mayoral election won’t come until 2025, and the position will become open if the current mayor runs for governor. “This is a great city, an iconic city. … It embodies the American ideal,” he said in a phone interview from the Jersey City office of New Jersey Reentry, where he serves as executive director.
He said he was running to improve the city’s public schools — 90 percent of students come from economically disadvantaged families — and he wants to build more housing to help alleviate high rents in a city populated by immigrants from Africa, the West Indies and Central America.
Part of his campaign will focus on reintroducing himself to voters.
Time has passed. An entire generation is unaware that McGreevey was once an up-and-comer who rose to the top in a state known for its fierce political pressures and the number of politicians arrested for corruption. Recently, he was stopped on a New Jersey highway by a state trooper, who, upon investigation, ran McGreevey’s driver’s license and discovered that he had once held a prominent position. However, the young trooper had no idea who McGreevey was and forced him to identify himself as a former governor.
“Where were you?” asked the perplexed policeman.
“You were in nappies so there’s no way you could have heard it,” McGreevy replied.
It’s a story McGreevey is happy to tell, with some self-deprecating humour but also a suggestion that time has passed since the scandal and old wounds may have healed.
He’s made good use of the time. He’s proud of how connected his family has remained, and he and both of his ex-wives have worked together to raise his two children. This summer has been a season of celebration: One daughter graduated from Barnard College at Columbia University, and another got married in June.
McGreevey, meanwhile, returned to his Catholic roots.
Mr. McGreevey recalled the close bond he had with his late father, a former U.S. Marine Corps drill instructor who stood calmly next to his son at his resignation news conference. After his mother died, Mr. McGreevey took his father to Mass at St. Joseph’s Church, their former parish in Carteret, New Jersey.
This welcoming experience strengthened the former governor’s ties to Catholicism.
It was part of a journey back to the church he attended as a child, including his Catholic elementary and high school.
He said the way was paved by Pope Francis’ message of welcome to the LGBTQ community. He described the pontiff’s public acceptance of LGBTQ Catholics as “like water in the desert” and said he was willing to forgive the pontiff for recent controversy over disparaging remarks about the gay clergy subculture.
“Fall to Grace,” a 2013 HBO documentary by House Speaker Alexandra Pelosi that charted McGreevey’s emergence from scandal and dedication to service, reflects McGreevey’s spirituality and commitment to service following the scandal. The writings of prominent LGBTQ Catholics Andrew Sullivan and the late Father John McNeil provided McGreevey with spiritual solace, and one of his seminary professors was Jesuit Father Leo O’Donovan, former president of Georgetown University, who McGreevey says was his toughest grader and mentor.
McGreevey’s Catholic path led him to Christ the King Parish in Jersey City, a historically black Catholic parish that is now a spiritual home for a mixed African, West Indian and black American population.
He identifies as a combination of traditional and progressive Catholicism. He said the rosary with a group of mostly older female parishioners who were wise elders and faith leaders. He was asked to lead the group in prayer but declined, fearing he would not remember the incantations of the rosary he learned as a young baby boomer Catholic.
Few politicians meddle in the internal politics of the Catholic Church, but McGreevey follows the church closely and is prepared to speak out. He is surprised to see traditional friends turning against Pope Francis.
“We play by the rules,” he said, describing himself as a “center-left” Catholic who tries to incorporate the pope’s teachings into his daily life. He finds it ironic that, by contrast, many traditionalist Catholics reject the current pope.
Politically, McGreevey describes his three years as governor as a time of real problem-solving, including a third-grade literacy initiative that he believes has produced important educational gains, particularly for poor children in the state’s urban areas.
McGreevey said he has taken to heart a training recommended to him by an Italian priest he met while serving at the Cabrini facility. He was told to focus on who would appear on his deathbed. The people he imagined included his daughters, his two ex-wives and some friends. After that spiritual training, he said he focused on repairing those relationships and realizing who was important in his life.
“We all need to give ourselves permission to grow, change, love and become more whole people. Sometimes it takes work,” he said, giving the example of his own father, who grew to be loving and accepting of his famous son before his death last year.
McGreevey has embraced the label Catholic and now sees himself as more than just a gay American, and he credits his growing Catholic faith for contributing to his newfound efforts to reenter public life.
“My faith underpins my values, my compassion and my sense of social justice as a source of strength,” he said.
Next year, it will be Jersey City voters who await judgment.
