Background
Reverend Morales was born in San Antonio, Texas. His mother, Oralia López, was of Mexican-American heritage. His father, Peter Morales, was an immigrant from Spain.
- Photos
- Works
- Photos
- Works
Peter Morales
Edit ProfileEducation
On graduation from high school he attended Raymond College at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. Active in student government, he studied history and social theory.
Career
Morales is the first Latino president His initial language was Spanish. As a youth he greatly enjoyed baseball.
Faced with the draft during the Vietnam War he immigrated to Revelstoke, British Columbia.
There he worked in a lumber mill and as a reporter for a community newspaper. Number longer in danger from the draft, he returned to the United States when he was 26 and entered a program in American Studies at the University of Kansas.
Following a summer in Mexico studying Spanish, Morales was granted a lectureship in 1976 as a Fulbright lecturer in American literature and American history at the University of Oviedo in Asturias in northern Spain. He worked there until 1985 on tasks related to the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program
In 1985, Morales ventured into newspaper publishing as the owner of community newspapers in Rogue River and Cottage Grove, Oregon, being a pioneer in the use of desktop publishing.
As an experienced and innovative journalist, in 1995 he was awarded one of the first Knight International Journalism Fellowships and spent 5 months teaching and advising at Louisiana Industria de Chiclayo in Chiclayo, Peru. Very active, he served on the congregation"s board of trustees. Active in liberal evangelism while still in seminary, under his leadership the Jefferson Unitarian Church grew rapidly.
In 2013 the salary of the UUA president was set at $222,916.
