ANNUAL PENNSYLVANIA PRAYER BREAKFAST ONLINE
Senators Maria Collet & Kristin Phillips-Hill
along with Representatives Stephanie Borowicz & Robert Merski
were the host for this year’s Pennsylvania Prayer Breakfast Online.
Watch This Years Prayer Breakfast – Click HERE
Why a prayer breakfast? To bring people in positions of authority and influence to gather together, break bread, and pray around the Person of Jesus of Nazareth. There is a place for partisanship, disagreement, and lines in the sand. But it is equally important that we remember our common humanity and dependence on God and our shared love of Pennsylvania and the United States. The goal of the Pennsylvania Prayer Breakfast is to build a beachhead for peace, unity, and good fellowship among people of influence who are seeking to do good in this state.
May 4, 2021
2021 Theme: Value, Virtues, and Leadership

Maj. Gen. Julie Bentz, Vice Director, Joint Improvised Threat Defeat Agency, poses for a command portrait in the Army portrait studio at the Pentagon in Arlington, VA, June 20, 2016. (U.S. Army photo by Monica King/Released)
Speaker for 2021. Julie Bentz, Major General of the United States Army (retired)
Julie Bentz is a retired Major General of the United States Army. Much of her time on active duty was spent serving on three Presidents’ security councils at the White House working to reduce global threats from weapons of mass destruction. She has a Doctorate in Nuclear Engineering and a Master of Science in National Security Strategy.
Julie A. Bentz was born in 1964 in Jordan, Oregon to Ron and Barbara Bentz. Her father was a deacon at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church and served the local Catholic Community. She attended Regis High School beginning in 1978, where she was elected Student Body President after a successful write-in campaign. Her instructors described her as “very effervescent, very outgoing.” She enrolled at Oregon State University in 1982 with the support of an ROTC scholarship, having selected OSU from a list of 200 potential schools.
She graduated from OSU in 1986 with a BS in Radiological Health. From there she was deployed to Landstuhl, Germany as a Nuclear Science Officer, and her first years in service as part of the U.S. military team were spent responding to the Chernobyl disaster.
She was later redeployed to Texas where she trained combat medics deployed for the Gulf War. In 1991 she transferred to the Reserves and subsequently spent 3-4 years in Europe and Africa with a Catholic evangelizing missionary team. When she returned, she was assigned to a variety of posts ranging from environmental science officer to strategic plans science advisor. During this time, she undertook graduate and post-graduate studies, earning an MS in Health Physics in 1996 and a Ph. D. in Nuclear Engineering in 1999, both from the University of Missouri. Her most recent degree is an MS in National Security Strategy from the National Defense University, National War College.