He was a chaplain at Princeton University from 1985 to 1990 and the director of the Catholic Information Center for the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. from 1998 to 2002. He was known for providing spiritual guidance to famous D.C. figures from Senator Sam Brownback to Newt Gingrich to journalist Robert Novak, among others. In 2019, it was revealed that Opus Dei paid close to USD 1 million to settle a 2005 sexual misconduct claim against McCloskey from 2002.



