On January 21, 2001, Pope John Paul II announced the names of 37 new Cardinals who will be officially created in the Consistory to be held on February 22. Among them there are some Jesuits. Here is a brief curriculum vitae for each:
Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Primate of Argentina
Archbishop Bergoglio was born on December 17, 1936 in Buenos Aires. He entered the Society on March 11, 1958 and was ordained a priest on December 13, 1969. In addition to other assignments, he was the Provincial in the Province of Argentina from 1973 through 1979 and a participant in General Congregations 32 and 33.
Father Dulles is a member of the Province of New York and is currently the McGinley Professor of Religion and Society at Fordham University in the Bronx, New York
Father Dulles was born on August 24, 1918, in Auburn, New York. He entered the Society on August 14, 1946 and was ordained a priest on June 16, 1956. During his career, Fr Dulles has been a Professor of Theology at Woodstock College in Woodstock, Maryland; at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts; at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, and at Fordham University in the Bronx, New York. He is the author of a number of books on Systematic Theology.
Father Tucci is a member of the Province of Italy.
Fr Tucci was born in Naples on April 19, 1921. He entered the Society on October 1, 1936 and was ordained a priest on August 24, 1950. In addition to other assignments, he was General Editor of Civiltà Cattolica from 1959 to 1973. Fr Tucci was also the General Director of Vatican Radio and for a number of years has been the coordinator for Papal trips. He participated in General Congregations 31, 32, and 33. [Source: Jesuit Press and Information Office]
According to the information received at the Jesuit Curia in Rome on January 14, there were no personal losses among the Jesuits resulting from the earthquake in El Salvador. However, the old church in Santa Tecla was practically demolished. The Provincial of the region called a meeting of Jesuits for January 15 in order to see how they could assist the victims of this strong earthquake.
Since the January 13 earthquake in El Salvador, the Jesuits and other religious have activated a solidarity network to help alleviate suffering. According to the data of the Central American Province of the Jesuits, 25,000 houses have been damaged, 7,000 destroyed, at least 600 have died, 100 schools ruined, and 96 churches seriously damaged.
The Jesuits have mobilized an aid project called the "Ignatian Aid Network," with the goal of going in and helping those zones that receive little aid from institutions.
The students of the Jesuit-run Central American University are also helping, and Fr José Adan Cuadra, the Provincial of Central America, has opened up a bank account for economic aid. [Source: Vidimus Dominum]
Denying the dispatches distributed by some news agencies, the Provincial of Central America, Fr. A. Cuadra, affirmed that "at present there is no intention to bring to any Spanish courts of justice the case of the Jesuits murdered at the University of Central America (UCA)". An appeal, however, has been made in El Salvador against the decision to exculpate the moral instigators of the crime. [Jesuit Press and Information Service]
Catholics still dominate the US Congress. There are 150, including 91 Democrats and 59 Republicans, among the 535 members of the 107th Congress. Catholics have been the largest religious bloc in the legislative branch since 1964, said Albert Menendez of Americans for Religious Liberty, a church-state separation group that conducts the survey. "They're going to stay in first place probably forever."
Baptists are the next-largest bloc with 72 members, including 37 Republicans, 34 Democrats, and one independent. Methodists added the most members, six, increasing their total to 65. There are also 49 Presbyterians, 41 Episcopalians, 37 Jews, 29 "nondenominational Protestants," 20 Lutherans, 15 Mormons, and eight members of the United Church of Christ. There are no Muslims, Buddhists, or Hindus in the current Congress, and seven members claimed no religious affiliation. [Source: Religious News Service]
Fr Francis X Clooney SJ, United States Assistancy coordinator for Mission and Interreligious Dialogue, reports that Fr Raymond Bucko SJ has worked on a Mission and Interreligious Dialogue website that has recently been established at: http://puffin.creighton.edu/jesuit/dialogue/
The site includes much information on this topic including:
For more information, reactions, or questions, e-mail Fr Clooney at clooney@bc.edu or visit the website. [Source: Francis X Clooney]
Will Coley, Jesuit Refugee Service/USA (JRS) Project Director, has been awarded the 2001 Reebok Human Rights Award, which includes a $50,000 grant to the project. The award is given each year to four young human rights activists around the world.
Since 1997, Coley has served as Project Director for the JRS Detainee and Asylee Assistance Project in New Jersey. There he established pastoral and social services for people detained by the US Immigration and Naturalization Service in its Elizabeth Detention Center. With the support of local churches and community groups, Coley also ran a visitor project that has matched dozens of detainees with volunteers from the community. Today JRS operates projects in Los Angeles and El Paso assisting some of the roughly 20,000 currently detained by the INS.
"I'm very pleased that Reebok has recognized the difficult situation of detained asylum seekers," said Coley, "I feel I am accepting this award on behalf of those men and women who came to the US seeking refuge and ended up locked away and hidden from the view of most Americans."
In late 1999, as JUSA reported [February 10, 2000], the INS suspended JRS English classes at the Elizabeth facility because, "Jesuit Refugee Services broke the covenant that had been reached with INS," according to a statement from INS district director Andrea Quarantillo. The program of English classes, pastoral visits, and Bible study "was initiated to provide detainees with a positive outlet for their energies that would not deal with detention issues."
According to JRS/USA National Director, Fr Rick Ryscavage SJ, "The INS even canceled a JRS volunteer-led Bible study group after the group discussed scripture regarding visiting prisoners and welcoming strangers."
"Despite these significant obstacles," said Fr Ryscavage, "Will does an extraordinary job mobilizing an effective network of concerned individuals, religious, and community groups dedicated to helping these detainees." [Source: JRS/USA]
The Koyukon Athabaskan Dictionary, a comprehensive ethnographic dictionary of the native Alaskan language, has been published by the Native Language Center of the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
The dictionary is a collaborative work, spanning a century, by Fr Jules Jetté, an Alaskan missionary and scholar, and Dr Eliza Jones, a Koyukon language expert. Fr Jetté was born in Montreal, Canada, in 1864 of aristocratic parentage. He spent almost all of his 26 years as an Alaskan missionary ministering to the Koyukon Athabaskan people living in the villages of Nulato, Kokrines, and Tanana.
The dictionary contains more than 8,800 vocabulary items, 17,500 example sentences, 120 illustrations, 114 figures, six maps, and 3,200 descriptive comments by Fr Jetté, Dr Jones, and other contributors. The clothbound dictionary can be ordered online at http://www.uaf.edu/anlc/ [Source: Fr Louis Renner SJ]
Fr Harry Tompson SJ, who witnesses poverty daily in New Orleans, believes that education is the key to ending it. In September, he will open a free-tuition Catholic school to serve some of the city's poorest children.
An old furniture store, purchased for Fr Tompson by an anonymous donor, is undergoing a $1.25 million conversion into the Good Shepherd School, which will have 15 students each in kindergarten and first grade on opening day. One grade will be added each year until the school comprises grades K-8.
"I spent a lot of years educating and working with young men who were very gifted because they have the two greatest gifts in the world -- a mother and a father who care about them," said Fr Tompson, who was principal of Jesuit High in New Orleans for 13 years.
"Now I want the other end of the spectrum -- children who really don't have mothers and fathers in that sense and who don't have what most of the kids at Jesuit High had -- cars, gas, homes, mommies and daddies, trips," he said.
The school is modeled after several other Jesuit-run "Nativity" schools across the country in which students from poor families are given intensive academic and spiritual training. The school will look for hard-working students. Their parents will pay $100 a year, and they will be intimately involved in their children's education, according to Fr Tompson.
Fr Tompson said the school's success will be based on lay involvement, support for his efforts to create a $5 million-$7 million endowment for the school, and volunteer educators and mentors. [Source: CNS. Do not repost electronically]
Fr Peter-Hans Kolvenbach SJ, Superior General of the Society of Jesus, has appointed Fr Robert J Scullin SJ, as the next Provincial of the Detroit Province. Fr Scullin will assume office in the summer of 2001.
The Board of Loyola University Chicago has elected Fr Michael J Garanzini SJ (MIS) as the next president of Loyola University to succeed Fr John J Piderit SJ (NYK).
Fr John R Donahue SJ (MAR) has been named the Raymond E Brown Distinguished Professor of New Testament Studies at St Mary's Seminary and University in Baltimore. He is the first scholar to hold the appointment. The seminary established the professorship in honor of the late Raymond E Brown SS, widely regarded as the premier Roman Catholic biblical scholar in the US. He will assume his new position in July 2001.
[Source: National Jesuit News and other sources]
A fifty rupee Nepalese coin, minted on the occasion of the school's anniversary, proclaims the celebration of "St Xavier's Golden Jubilee, 1951-2001." The King and Queen, seated between the rector, Fr Casper Miller, and the director, Fr Lawrence Maniyar, presented awards granted to nine persons connected with the Jesuit school. In his speech, Fr Miller thanked Their Majesties for the support during the past 50 years, and Fr Maniyar spoke about the ideal of Jesuit education. The gracious parting words of the King was to thank the Jesuits for the invitation to attend the ceremony. [Source: Jesuit Press and Information Office, Rome]
Ten years after the end of Communist Europe, where the word "justice" was all too often used to name the greatest injustices, the word "social" hasn't lost its negative connotations. If a sort of schizophrenia has separated the service of faith from service of justice, this seems to be healing bit by bit. Moving beyond word associations, Jesuits are trying to discover where social ministry is most urgent in societies that, with rapid change and secularization, are marginalizing entire groups of the population such as the young unemployed.
Some 30 Jesuits from central and eastern Europe met last November at Warsaw-Falenica in the new European Centre for Communication and Culture (ECCC) to do their own reading of Father General's letter "On the Social Apostolate." Men who in the 1990s contributed creatively to the growth of the social apostolate exchanged experiences and offered encouragement to the many scholastics who are attracted to this ministry. Proposals were made here for strengthening motivations and spirituality, for formation, coordination, and broader collaboration. [Source: Headlines]
Jesuit College Prep in Dallas is suing the state's public league over its ban on private school membership. Forty-seven states allow public and private schools to play in the same league. Of the 46 Jesuit high schools in the United States, only Dallas Jesuit and the other Texas Jesuit high school Strake in Houston are denied the opportunity to play in public school leagues.
State officials say that because Catholic schools do not have boundaries around the areas from which they draw students, they could recruit players from any place in the city and take the best players.
"We've tried all peaceful means available," said Fr Philip Postell SJ, president of Dallas Jesuit. "We always knew that this [lawsuit] was an outside possibility."
Jim Harris, Dallas Jesuit's attorney, said the suit is threefold:
Fr Postell said by denying Jesuit admittance, the league is also affecting the school's mission to educate youths. "Education takes place in and out of the classroom. Part of the whole picture of education is to have extracurricular opportunities," he said. [Source: CNS. Do not repost electronically]
Fr Franco Mormando SJ, associate professor of Italian at Boston College, was presented the Howard R Marraro Prize at the American Catholic Historical Association's annual meeting in early January. The Marraro prize is named in memory of a professor at Columbia University who wrote more than a dozen books on Italian literature, history, and culture.
Fr Mormando was honored for his book, "The Preacher's Demons: Bernardino of Siena and the Social Underworld of Early Renaissance Italy," which was published by the University of Chicago Press in 1999. [Source: CNS. Do not repost electronically]
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