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March 13, 2009 |
Fr. Patrick McGrath SJ was elected president of Loyola Academy on March 11. McGrath will be the school’s eighth president when he succeeds Fr. Theodore Munz SJ, president for 13 years, on July 1.
McGrath graduated from the University of Notre Dame and earned master’s degrees in divinity and organizational change. He served as director of Ignatian and Jesuit identity at Loyola Academy and most recently was Chicago Province’s assistant for secondary education. [Loyola Academy]
Fr. Edward Mudavassery SJ was named provincial of South Asia and President of the South Asian Jesuit Conference. Mudavassery is former provincial of Hazaribagh and presently serves as Rector of Vidyajyoti College of Theology in Delhi. He will begin his new assignment on May 31. [EAO News]
A Polish-language film will tell the story of two American Jesuits who attempted to remove the relics of St. Andrew Bobola SJ from the Soviet Union in the 1920s. Harvey Keitel, star of Reservoir Dogs, will play Edmund Walsh SJ, who headed the relief effort during Russia’s famine from 1921 to 1923 and served as unofficial Vatican ambassador to the Soviets during a time of religious oppression. Louis Gallagher SJ, Walsh’s assistant, is also featured in the film, which will begin production soon.
Martin Scorsese is directing an upcoming film based on Shusaku Endo’s novel Silence. The film follows Portuguese Jesuits Sebastião Rodrigues and Francis Garrpe through missionary work in seventeenth-century Japan. [McNamara’s Blog]
Students at Santa Clara University in California continue to effect environmental change even after they’ve returned from a service trip to Appalachia. At the advice of students Douglas Wheeler and Julia Mock, Fr. Michael Engh SJ divested the university of stock it had held in Massey Energy Company.
The students witnessed environmental degradation caused by the company, which mines coal through mountain top removal, while on an immersion trip in Appalachia. They wrote a letter to Engh upon their return. The president of Wheeling Jesuit University in West Virginia and a Santa Clara Environmental Studies intern confirmed the damage done by Massey Energy, and the finance office divested the stock, as Engh reported in his recent State of the University address. [Charleston Gazette]
The Jesuit Commission for Social and International Ministries invites Jesuit groups and institutions to join the Ignatian PeaceAction 2009 by dedicating a day of prayer during the Easter season and encouraging the Ignatian family to make the “St. Francis Pledge to Protect Creation and the Poor.”
Other initiatives will follow throughout the year and will culminate in the Ignatian Solidarity Networks’s Spring Teach-In on climate change in 2010.
Over 180 groups participated last year. If your group or someone you know would like to participate, contact Dave Zwaska at (773) 975-6886 or projasst@jesuits-chi.org.
More information on the Ignatian PeaceAction 2009 can be found on the Jesuit Conference website. More resources are available at www.catholicsandclimatechange.org. [Chicago Province]
Saint Peter’s College in Jersey City, New Jersey, was featured on The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric on March 4 in a segment that addressed effects of the economy on college students.
CBS’s Byron Pitts interviewed Saint Peter’s president Eugene Cornacchia SJ about what the college is doing to help its students, many of whom are finding it hard to keep up with tuition payments in this economy, stay in school.
Saint Peter’s is cutting its budget and developing extended payment plans and new financial aid packages to keep as many students enrolled as possible. You can watch the CBS video below; visit www.spc.edu for more information. [St. Peter’s College]
Loyola Marymount University business administration students learned real-world product design and development experience, thanks to professor David Choi. Choi developed a new class for his entrepreneurship students that partners with the OTIS College of Art and Design.
LMU students studied product design skills with OTIS instructors while OTIS students took a business and finance course at LMU. Students then collaborated to create business plans and prototypes of working, marketable products such as mobility scooters, home energy management systems, filtered touchless water fountains, and specialty solar panels
“I’m always so focused on business plans that I never even noticed how everything else is formulated,” says LMU senior Andrew Beck. “This project has allowed me to really play a working role and to make my product marketable. Now I understand that it’s not just a great idea but a great design that makes a product whole.” [Loyola Marymount University]
Houston’s new Cristo Rey Jesuit College Prep is on track to open in August, according to Fr. Antonio Martinez SJ and his staff. The school building is undergoing extensive renovations and applications are being accepted for the 2009-10 school year.
BrandExtract, a Houston design firm, unveiled a new logo, seal, and website for the school. To learn more about one of the newest Cristo Rey schools and to view the new logo and website, visit www.cristoreyhouston.org.
Strake Jesuit College Prep is hoping to become the first private school in the history of Texas’s University Interscholastic League to win a state championship in basketball. The Class5A state tournament begins today, and the Crusaders’ fate will be decided by the end of this weekend. Strake is currently ranked 1st in the league with a 37-0 record. [Houston Chronicle]
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