The Rev. Peter R. Carey is an American author, scholar, Episcopal priest, and activist. He is known for his translation of a rare work of St. Thomas Aquinas, De Sortibus.^[1][2] as well as his preaching skills and published sermons.^[3][4] He has also published numerous articles, primarily focusing on the full inclusion of gay people in the church and, during the 1980s, on helping people with AIDS.^[5][6]

Carey was born in New York City on December 14, 1938 to Peter R. Carey and Kathleen O'Hara. In 1959, he entered the Dominican Order and in 1966 was ordained a priest in the Roman Catholic Church.^[7] While a Catholic priest, he completed his graduate studies in Rome at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, known as the Angelicum. Just before the conferral of his doctoral degree, he left the Dominicans. He remained in Rome and taught English to Russian Jewish emigrants to America. 

Carey moved to New York in 1977 where he worked for Price Waterhouse and later for Citibank. At Citibank, he translated technical material into plain English, wrote speeches, edited newsletters, and travelled worldwide on behalf of the bank.^[8] He become a vice president in 1987.

After returning to New York, Carey became an Episcopalian and was involved in promoting gay rights and AIDS activism. He began a clipping service that helped early AIDS organizations know what was being published about AIDS both in the U.S. and abroad. He was also among the founders of the AIDS Memorial Chapel at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan and the chairman of the AIDS Memorial Fund that made small grants to start-up AIDS organizations.^[6]

In 1985, he was elected to the Board of Directors of Integrity/New York where he advocated for the greater inclusion of gay and lesbian members in The Episcopal Church.^[6][9] In 1990, he returned to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church^[8] to be of help to those dying in the AIDS epidemic and was named a Trustee of the Episcopal Diocese of New York in 1992.

Carey served as vicar of St. Stephen’s Woodlawn in The Bronx from 1991 to 1997. His communications with the parish were compiled and published as A Vicar's Pages.^[10] In 1994, he was diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia and left St. Stephen’s, later volunteering as an assisting priest at the Church of the Holy Apostles in New York City. In 2000, Carey received an experimental cancer treatment and was able to recover from his leukemia. In recent years he has spent significant time in Venice.

Peter Carey is married to David Natoli. They were married in Quebec in 2007 after being together 30 years.

Carey was awarded an A.B. in philosophy in 1962 from Providence College, a four-year liberal arts college run by the Dominican Fathers in Providence, Rhode Island. By then he had pronounced first vows and had begun philosophical studies at Dominican House of Philosophy (St. Stephen's College) in Dover, Massachusetts, where he was awarded an M.A. in philosophy in 1964. He then went on to be awarded an S.T.L (Lectorate in Sacred Theology) and and S.T.lr. (Licentiate in Sacred Theology) from the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception, Washington, D.C., in 1967. That year, Carey began to teach philosophy at St. Stephen’s College, and the next year was transferred to the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum) in Rome, Italy, for post-graduate work in theology. In 1970, while living in Rome, he was awarded an M.A. in theology from Aquinas Institute.

While a Dominican, Carey published "God's Command and Human Judgment"^[11] and "Parousial Aspects of Christian Life"^[12] in Dominicana Journal under his Dominican name, Bartholomew Carey, O.P. As part of graduate studies, he published his dissertation, “Parousial Implications of Beatitude: A Study of the Tension between Interim and Final Beatitude.”^[13] While in the order he also published his first translation of a De Sortibus by St. Thomas Aquinas, The opusculum on lots of Saint Thomas Aquinas: a translation and commentary.^[1] In 2021, he published a more accessible translation as De Sortibus: A Letter to a Friend about the Casting of Lots.^[2] In 1999 he published “Poems/Poesie,”^[14] poems of his deceased first partner, Mario Favorito. Later, in 2000, he published a family history entitled “From One to a Hundred.”^[15] A collection of his sermons entitled In Season and Out^[4] was published in 2006. He marked the 50th anniversary of his ordination in 2016 with the publication of a second collection of homilies, The Holy Apostles Sermons. ^[3]

Carey is the great grandson of Peter J. Carey, founder of PJ Carey & Sons, a printing and lithography company in New York City^[16].