Meet our Board of Directors

Fr. Jack Bentz, SJ

Pastor, Blessed Sacrament Church

Jack is one of six brothers and a sister who grew up on a cattle ranch in Oregon. He attended rural public schools and went to Gonzaga University, graduating with degrees in theater and English literature. He then studied acting at Circle in the Square Theater in New York City and worked as a theater artist  in New York and Seattle for ten years before entering the Society of Jesus.

He initially became interested in religious life when he read a broken spined paperback copy of Thomas Merton’s Seven Story Mountain which recounts one man’s conversion from the emptiness of worldly life into the vocation of a silent monk.  Fr. Bentz was familiar with a worldly life but becoming a silent monk seemed a stretch, so he responded to Christ’s call to join the Jesuits where he has flourished.

Jack has served in campus ministry at Seattle University and Gonzaga as well as Director of Vocations for the Oregon Jesuits, founding artistic director of a bilingual theater company called Deus X Machina, and as director of Bronco Catholic, the Catholic student center at Boise State University.  Jack also writes for America Media and completed a podcast called Belmont Voices.

Prior to being assigned to Blessed Sacrament, Jack served four years with the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States, leading the implementation of a newly revised training program for Jesuit seminarians in the Bronx.

Fr. Bentz has been pastor at Blessed Sacrament Hollywood since August 2021 and has loved getting to know Los Angeles and the beautifully diverse community that gathers here on the campus.