Founder
Pastora Tori Matthews
Founder, President, and Executive Pastora of Bloom Ministries. Ordained clergy, disability advocate, and the person who was doing this work alone before it had a name.
The Role
What she actually does here.
Tori Matthews founded Bloom Ministries in Salem, Oregon in October 2025 and currently serves as its President and Executive Pastora. In an organization this size, that title covers considerably more ground than it would elsewhere — she is the person answering crisis contacts, building the infrastructure, writing the liturgy, filing the compliance paperwork, and doing most of the work in between.
She takes no salary for any of it, and has not since founding. That is published on the Accountability page as a number rather than a claim, and if it ever changes it will be announced there in advance with the reasoning.
As ordained clergy in the Independent Catholic tradition, she leads Faith in Bloom, offering daily liturgy in the 1962 Roman Rite — a tradition she came to through her grandfather’s missal, and which she offers without any of the gatekeeping it is usually packaged with. She is also authorized to solemnize marriages in Oregon under ORS 106.120.
Faith without justice is just ritual. Love without action is just sentiment. We are here to make both real.
Pastoral work
Daily liturgy, homilies, pastoral care, and the Reclaiming Library — scripture that has been used as a weapon, answered with rigor rather than avoided.
Faith in Bloom →Advocacy
Disability rights and trans equality, from individual benefits appeals through public education. Approached from lived experience rather than professional distance.
Disability advocacy →Speaking
Available for congregations, conferences, classrooms, and workplaces on trans-affirming faith, disability justice, and designing services people will actually use.
Request a speaker →Media, speaking, or a direct question?
Interview requests and speaking inquiries both route through Contact. Note your outlet or event and any deadline, and it moves to the front.