Sweeney converted to Catholicism after spending twenty years as an active Episcopalian, on the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi in Woodstock, Vermont, in 2009.
Sweeney and Woll were profiled in "When a Jew and a Catholic Marry" by Mark Oppenheimer in America (magazine) in August 2017.
[1] While at Moody, Sweeney arranged to serve as a summer missionary in Batangas City, Philippines, an experience that he later wrote about in his memoir, Born Again and Again.
[citation needed] Sweeney's books about Francis of Assisi have focused on debunking myths that he believes persist from films and novels of the 1960s and 1970s, such as the image of the "hippie" Francis that endures from "Brother Sun, Sister Moon," Franco Zeffirelli's 1972 movie.
[4] Sweeney's projects include a book of short excerpts of the medieval, Dominican Order mystic, Meister Eckhart, retold as blank verse, coauthored with Mark Burrows;[5] and a history of the rift between Bernard of Clairvaux and Peter Abelard in the 12th century, titled The Saint vs. the Scholar.