He’s photographed Jesuits assisting Tsunami victims in India and Sri Lanka in 2005; refugees in Burundi, Rwanda and the Congo in 2007; and Sudanese refugees in eastern Chad along the Darfur border in 2008. Most recently, one of Doll’s photos was selected by 1001 Stories of Common Ground‘s Positive Change in Action competition showcasing pieces which highlight the positive changes in the Arab world.

Currently, Doll is a professor of photojournalism at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb. where he holds the Charles and Mary Heider Endowed Jesuit Chair. Recently, he took time out from his busy schedule to speak with National Jesuit News by phone for our monthly podcast series. You can listen to the interview with Doll below:

On December 3, 2010, the Feast of St. Francis Xavier, Boston Archbishop Cardinal Seán O’Malley, OFM Cap., presided at the blessing of the Chapel of the Holy Name of Jesus at the Blessed Peter Faber Jesuit Community near the Boston College (BC) campus.

The chapel stands at the heart of the Jesuit Community of the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry (BCSTM). Named for one of the first Jesuits who was known for his preaching and spiritual guidance, the Faber Community is home to BCSTM faculty members and 55 Jesuits from more than twenty countries who are preparing for priesthood and other ministries in the Catholic Church. The new community residence was needed when the former Weston School of Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts reaffiliated with Boston College and moved to the BC campus.

“The opening of the Blessed Peter Faber Jesuit Community this fall enriches the strong Jesuit presence on the BC campus,” said Jesuit Father Thomas H. Smolich, president of the Jesuit Conference. “The Jesuits appreciate the support Cardinal O’Malley has given to our ministry of priestly formation through his blessing of the chapel.”

Cardinal O’Malley expressed gratitude to the Society of Jesus for service to the Church in Boston and throughout the world. As evidence of his gratitude, Cardinal O’Malley is giving the community an image of Our Lady of Montserrat to place in the chapel. The pilgrimage site of Montserrat in Spain is where St. Ignatius of Loyola formally abandoned his military and courtly life and embraced his new identity as a pilgrim, a first step toward his founding of the Society of Jesus.

In addition to  Fr. Smolich, principal concelebrants of the Eucharist were Jesuit Fathers Bradley M. Schaeffer, rector of the Blessed Peter Faber Jesuit Community, William P. Leahy, president of Boston College, and Steven C. Dillard, secretary for formation at the Jesuit Conference.

On December 3, 2010, the Feast of St. Francis Xavier, Boston Archbishop Cardinal Seán O’Malley, OFM Cap., presided at the blessing of the Chapel of the Holy Name of Jesus at the Blessed Peter Faber Jesuit Community near the Boston College (BC) campus.

The chapel stands at the heart of the Jesuit Community of the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry (BCSTM). Named for one of the first Jesuits who was known for his preaching and spiritual guidance, the Faber Community is home to BCSTM faculty members and 55 Jesuits from more than twenty countries who are preparing for priesthood and other ministries in the Catholic Church. The new community residence was needed when the former Weston School of Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts reaffiliated with Boston College and moved to the BC campus.

“The opening of the Blessed Peter Faber Jesuit Community this fall enriches the strong Jesuit presence on the BC campus,” said Jesuit Father Thomas H. Smolich, president of the Jesuit Conference. “The Jesuits appreciate the support Cardinal O’Malley has given to our ministry of priestly formation through his blessing of the chapel.”

Cardinal O’Malley expressed gratitude to the Society of Jesus for service to the Church in Boston and throughout the world. As evidence of his gratitude, Cardinal O’Malley is giving the community an image of Our Lady of Montserrat to place in the chapel. The pilgrimage site of Montserrat in Spain is where St. Ignatius of Loyola formally abandoned his military and courtly life and embraced his new identity as a pilgrim, a first step toward his founding of the Society of Jesus.

In addition to  Fr. Smolich, principal concelebrants of the Eucharist were Jesuit Fathers Bradley M. Schaeffer, rector of the Blessed Peter Faber Jesuit Community, William P. Leahy, president of Boston College, and Steven C. Dillard, secretary for formation at the Jesuit Conference.

With gentrification morphing the once crime-ridden and drug-infested streets of the Lower East Side of Manhattan into storefronts filled with swanky merchandise and hip restaurants, the Nativity Mission Center, a Jesuit middle school that for nearly 40 years has been educating promising, but poor, boys in the neighborhood is starting to feel out of place. Knowing that the school must be located where the need is greatest, Jesuit Father Jack Podsiadlo is  following in the tradition of intrepid Jesuit missionaries and has embarked on an urban expedition: finding a needy neighborhood where he can relocate his school by 2012.

Fr. Podsiadlo’s quest to find the right location for his school and highlights of the work of the Nativity Mission Center are profiled in this piece in the New York Times. You can also view a slideshow of photos of the school and the Lower East Side neighborhood where it is currently located.

With gentrification morphing the once crime-ridden and drug-infested streets of the Lower East Side of Manhattan into storefronts filled with swanky merchandise and hip restaurants, the Nativity Mission Center, a Jesuit middle school that for nearly 40 years has been educating promising, but poor, boys in the neighborhood is starting to feel out of place. Knowing that the school must be located where the need is greatest, Jesuit Father Jack Podsiadlo is  following in the tradition of intrepid Jesuit missionaries and has embarked on an urban expedition: finding a needy neighborhood where he can relocate his school by 2012.

Fr. Podsiadlo’s quest to find the right location for his school and highlights of the work of the Nativity Mission Center are profiled in this piece in the New York Times. You can also view a slideshow of photos of the school and the Lower East Side neighborhood where it is currently located.

A takeoff on the “Flat Stanley Project” where children document the places and activities the beloved paper doll encounters, “Flat Fr. Martinez” travels with his friends of Cristo Rey Jesuit this summer, and the school has been tracking his adventures on their website. Students have reported he’s been an ideal travel companion, but a little quiet.

To see some of the places “Flat Fr. Martinez” has visited this summer, view the photo sideshow below:

Magis Productions, founded by noted photojournalist Jesuit Father Don Doll of Creighton University, will receive the 2010 Chief Standing Bear Organizational Award this Friday, May 14 in the Nebraska State Capitol Rotunda.

Awarded by the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs, the honor recognizes Fr. Doll and his colleague Carol McCabe for their work in the field of photography, particularly portrait photography, which gives “voice to Native American peoples and promotes social justice for all.”

Members of the Kateri Drum Group of St. Augustine Indian Mission, Winnebago, Neb., will perform at the awards event.

“It’s an honor to accept this award,” said Doll who was introduced to photography when he was assigned to the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota as a young Jesuit in the late 1960s. “It’s been a privilege to make photographs that in some small way assist Native Americans in the pride they take in their heritage and their identity.”

Since 2005, Fr. Doll has photographed children of St. Augustine Indian Mission each year for the award-winning St. Augustine fine arts calendar. The 2009 St. Augustine Calendar was named the No. 1 non-profit calendar in the nation by the Calendar Marketing Association.

Each year since 1997, Fr. Doll also has photographed students of Red Cloud Indian School, Pine Ridge, S.D., for its fine arts calendar.

During the last four decades, Fr. Doll has gained international recognition for his work. He has received the Kodak Crystal Eagle Award for Impact in Photojournalism; and the Nikon “World Understanding through Photography” award. He was named 2006 Nebraska Artist of the Year by the Nebraska Arts Council.

Doll is Professor of Photojournalism at Creighton University, Omaha, where he holds the Charles and Mary Heider Endowed Jesuit Chair. His work has been featured in National Geographic magazine, and a number of Day in the Life books, including America, California, Italy, Ireland, Passage to Vietnam, Christmas in America and America at Home.

His photographs also have been published in Crying for a Vision (Morgan and Morgan Publishers) and Vision Quest: Men, Women and Sacred Sites of the Sioux Nation (Crown Publishers). The interactive Vision Quest CD-ROM features much of his work. Nebraska Public TV produced the award-winning Don Doll’s Vision Quest – available on DVD.

Doll’s work has taken him to other parts of the world. He photographed Jesuits assisting Tsunami victims in India and Sri Lanka in 2005; refugees in Burundi, Rwanda and the Congo in 2007; Sudanese refugees in eastern Chad along the Darfur border in 2008. Most recently, he photographed Jesuits working with refugees along the Thai/Burma border, in Aceh, Indonesia and East Timor.

“I photograph to tell the stories of people who have no voice. Hopefully, I can help others understand and work to change unjust social structures.”

For more information about Magis Productions at Creighton University, visit http://magis.creighton.edu/ The St. Augustine 2010 calendar photographs can be viewed 24” x 36” year-around at the Betty Strong Encounter Center, Sioux City Iowa. [Exit 149 on I-29, or http://www.siouxcitylcic.com/]

Jesuit Father Bill Johnson was in the Dominican Republic when the earthquake struck Haiti on January 12. Fr. Johnson is the director for pastoral care at the Institute of Latin American Concern (ILAC) of Creighton University located just outside of Santiago. ILAC is a Catholic, Ignatian-inspired, collaborative health care and educational organization offering service-learning and immersion experience opportunities in dental, medical, nursing, pharmacy, law, physical therapy and occupational therapy for undergraduate and high school students, and also to faculty-led groups, medical/surgical teams and other colleges in the rural Dominican Republic.

When the call went out for help in the days after the earthquake, Johnson answered it by offering his services as a translator and as a helper to the Creighton medical team assembled to come to Haiti to provide emergency medical care to the wounded and critically injured.

Jesuit Fr. Bill Johnson (center) poses with Jim Jalovec (right) and John Ward (left) in front of Jalovec's helicopter as they deliver supplies during relief efforts in Haiti.

Johnson experienced another tragedy in the days that followed the earthquake when his good friend, Jim Jalovec, was killed while providing help during the Haiti relief efforts. Jalovec had phoned Johnson immediately after the earthquake in Haiti to offer the services of his helicopter in the relief efforts. Good Samaritan Hospital in Jimaní, Dominican Republic, where Johnson and Creighton University’s medical teams were working, invited Jalovec and his pilot, John Ward, to come and fly doctors and medicine into Haiti. Three days into their rescue efforts, they died when their helicopter hit a mountain on the foggy night of Feb. 4. Johnson presided at Jalovec’s funeral in Chicago and Ward’s in Ft. Myers, Fla.

In memory of Jalovec, ILAC is selling “Show Your Goodness” t-shirts to help the ongoing relief efforts in Haiti. All profits will be sent to the Jesuit Refugee Service in Haiti to help children suffering from the earthquake. The shirts can be purchased by visiting the showyourgoodness.com website.

Johnson shared his reflections with nationaljesuitnews.com on his time helping at Good Samaritan hospital in the days following the earthquake. You can read his reflections and see his photos by clicking below.

Padre, did you feel it?” asked the neighbor lady as I made my way around the running path at our grounds in the Dominican Republic that evening.

“Feel what?” I asked.

“The wave in the ground. And were you shaking the barbed wire fence?”she inquired.

I stopped my run and headed back into the Institute for Latin American Concern (ILAC) center where I was told the lights hanging from the ceiling in the entrance had been swaying considerably.

Then the news hit: a major earthquake had battered our neighbors in Haiti. It was Tuesday, Jan. 12, and preliminary reports said there were possibly thousands dead or dying and many more homeless. I was in disbelief. How could this happen less than 200 miles away in Port-au-Prince and we had no damage or people hurt in the Dominican Republic? It didn’t seem right or fair. But what could any of us do about it?

I had arrived in the Dominican Republic at the end of August to be director of pastoral care at Creighton University’s ILAC center in Santiago de los Caballeros, the country’s second largest city, situated in the middle of the Cibao Valley between two mountain ranges that traverse the island.

Because ILAC has been providing basic health care to the poor of the Dominican Republic since 1977, Creighton University Medical Center was in a unique position to respond to the tremendous needs of the earthquake victims. The next morning I received a phone call from Creighton’s Dr. Brian Loggie, professor of surgery, and, with the amazing cooperation and generosity of many individuals and institutions in Omaha, we had a well-supplied, nine-member health care team on the ground here at the ILAC center in Santiago.By Saturday evening we were preparing for the seven-hour bus ride to Good Samaritan Hospital on the Haitian frontier in the town of Jimaní, in the southwest corner of the Dominican Republic.

We arrived at Good Samaritan by mid-afternoon on Sunday and our team of surgeons, anesthetists, nurses and a pediatrician went right to work at the triage center where over 400 patients were lying everywhere waiting for care, most for broken bones and crushed limbs. Most operations those first days were amputations. Anesthesia, antibiotics and other medicines and supplies had been almost non-existent before we arrived. Indeed, amputations had been done without anesthesia before our arrival.

Our Creighton team tried to bring some order to what looked like the chaos of a war zone, even as
more patients arrived in the back of pick-ups, flatbed trucks, ambulances and cars. Most had come from in and around Port-au-Prince, some 40 miles to the west.

Monday morning began a week of 12-hour shifts and non-stop work. By mid-day Dr. Loggie had become in charge of the surgical area where our operating teams worked while the rest of our team selected the most critical patients for surgery and cared for wounds in the triage center on the other end of the grounds. Because of my fluency in Spanish and French, I was put in charge of the front doors of the surgical center to allow only those with clearance to enter. At times I was called in to the operating rooms to help communicate between the surgical teams and the patients. The Haitians were amazingly patient and appreciative. Often their cooperative spirit and even smiles showed their tremendous resilience and amazing dignity.

Each day brought new duties and special moments for me. I can still feel my guts wrench when on Monday afternoon a nurse approached me at the front door carrying a large black plastic bag and asked me where the morgue was. I’d seen some caskets on the side of the building and asked what was in the bag. He told me it was the arm of the man I’d just translated for. Later, a huge man who I’d helped communicate with by telling his lovely young wife that the doctors would have to amputate his leg, died during the operation. I was away from my post at the entrance to the operatory when he died but was asked to comfort the distraught wife when I returned.

I tried to pray with her in French but it didn’t come easily. The Creole the Haitians speak is quite different from Parisian French. However, a Haitian woman joined us and began singing religious songs in Creole as we held the wife. It was amazing how her breathing eased and body relaxed at the songs and caresses. The next morning I prayed with her again before she left to return to Haiti.

By mid-afternoon on Tuesday I stopped and realized that in the midst of the terrible suffering all around me I felt consolation. I had the thought that I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. I was where I was meant to be: serving God’s suffering people. I was not happy but I was full of joy to be there. Service of God’s people is joy. I shared that with other members of the team after dinner that night and most felt the same joyful sense of meaning and purpose in their service. Indeed, we all lamented that it took such a tremendous human tragedy to get so many good people together to do such good work. People laughed when someone remarked that they’d normally be bickering among themselves at their jobs back in Omaha.

The remainder of the week was full of blessings and challenges. We were all deeply touched by the suffering
of the kids; so beautiful, eyes full of light, smiles that melt your heart, some orphaned. By Wednesday, we were able to arrange for our first helicopter evacuations of patients in need of special care. Over the following days and weeks many more patients were evacuated, many in helicopters from the U.S.S. Comfort, a thousand-bed hospital ship off the coast of Port au Prince, through the intervention of Creighton administrators and Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska.

By Thursday, Good Samaritan was running efficiently and more than 80 operations were performed. Health teams from many other nations came and went, but our Creighton team, and several more that followed us, were stalwarts of the staffing. I was very proud of Creighton and of our country for such generous responses.

By Sunday, Jan. 24, we decided it was time for us to leave. We’d put in a tremendous week of service and helped the hospital get up and running. A new team had arrived from Creighton and other health professionals and supplies were showing up daily. We would leave after Mass at noon. The Scripture readings fit perfectly: “Today is holy to the Lord your God. Do not be sad, and do not weep” (Nehemiah 8:9). “As the body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ” (1 Cor. 12). “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing” (Lk. 1:21). I preached having lived the readings that week with God’s people, Haitian and American and many others. We had lived the words. We experienced joy.

Praise God!

Fr. Doll, a journalism professor at Creighton University in Omaha, has photographed war-torn countries where refugee camps are commonplace. In April, Doll was with Jesuit Refugee Service, an international Catholic relief agency, in eastern Chad along the Darfur border where he was among 250,000 Sudanese refugees.

Doll said his goal as a photographer is to provide an honest depiction of what is taking place. In an interview with the Milwaukee Catholic Herald, Doll discussed his work as a photographer and the images he has captured.

“I like pictures that show what a serious situation it truly is,” said Doll, who has photographed for National Geographic magazine. “Sometimes you can just sense in their eyes the horrors of what they’ve seen. There’s a heaviness in their heart.”

To read more about Doll’s work in the Sudan with Jesuit Refugee Service, click here.

To see Doll’s images taken of Sudanese refugees in Chad, please visit his website, Magis Productions.

Fr. Doll, a journalism professor at Creighton University in Omaha, has photographed war-torn countries where refugee camps are commonplace. In April, Doll was with Jesuit Refugee Service, an international Catholic relief agency, in eastern Chad along the Darfur border where he was among 250,000 Sudanese refugees.

Doll said his goal as a photographer is to provide an honest depiction of what is taking place. In an interview with the Milwaukee Catholic Herald, Doll discussed his work as a photographer and the images he has captured.

“I like pictures that show what a serious situation it truly is,” said Doll, who has photographed for National Geographic magazine. “Sometimes you can just sense in their eyes the horrors of what they’ve seen. There’s a heaviness in their heart.”

To read more about Doll’s work in the Sudan with Jesuit Refugee Service, click here.

To see Doll’s images taken of Sudanese refugees in Chad, please visit his website, Magis Productions.