Jesuit Father Thomas J. Massaro is currently Professor of Moral Theology at Boston College’s School of Theology and Ministry.

“We are delighted that Fr. Massaro will be leading the Jesuit School of Theology as a premier national and international center of graduate theological teaching, research, and ministerial formation,” said Santa Clara University Provost Dennis Jacobs. “As a teacher, scholar and Jesuit priest, Fr. Massaro brings great passion and a commitment to excellence in all that he does.”

Fr. Massaro’s teaching interests include Catholic social ethics, theories of economic justice, sociology of religion and the history of Christian political thought. His scholarly pursuits also flow from his deep commitment to hands-on social activism, particularly in labor justice and the promotion of peace.

“I am very eager to start my work as dean of Jesuit School of Theology,” said Fr. Massaro. “The extraordinary reputation of the school as a leader in theological education is well deserved. For decades, it has been preparing men and women for learned ministry in a distinctive way, one that is culturally aware and intellectually rigorous. What a privilege it is to help prepare Catholic lay and religious leaders for tomorrow’s church.”

The Jesuit School of Theology (JST) of Santa Clara University, located in Berkeley, Calif., is a preeminent international center for the culturally contextualized study of theology. Its mission is to inspire and prepare men and women to become leaders in the Church, academy and society, serving others through a faith that does justice. Rooted in Ignatian Spirituality, JST educates and trains Jesuits, religious, ordained and lay students from across the United States and from 40 other countries for lives dedicated to ministry and scholarship.

Fr. Massaro is the author or editor of five books, including American Catholic Social Teaching (Liturgical Press, 2002); Catholic Perspectives on Peace and War, (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003); U.S. Welfare Policy: A Catholic Response (Georgetown University Press, 2007) and Living Justice: Catholic Social Teaching in Action, Second Classroom Edition (Rowman and Littlefield, 2012).

A regular columnist for America magazine and sought-after public intellectual, Fr. Massaro lectures frequently on the moral evaluation of public policies regarding domestic and international issues such as foreign policy, anti-poverty efforts and globalization.

Jesuit

“My first teacher was my father, a role model who inspired me and others to do our best, to see what could be done,” Fr. Woods said. “We were the closest of friends.”

His father was a milkman, who he often accompanied on milk runs. His mother was an involved community member and parent, who offered him advice and support, and pushed him to make his dreams come true. “She taught me to ‘dream great dreams’ and to work with confidence to make them a reality,” Fr. Woods said.

His parents’ philosophy on life sparked a mindset that has guided him since childhood. “My parents’ outlook sparked optimism and hope,” he said.

Fr. Woods decided to become a Jesuit when he was a senior at Boston College High School, wishing to follow in the footsteps of those who had educated him.

“I was interviewed in the very spot where my office is today, but back then, it was an army barracks,” he said. “In front of the army barracks was an enormous pile of dirt, the forthcoming Fulton Hall. And then I saw the four other buildings that made up Boston College: Gasson, Bapst, St. Mary’s and Devlin Hall.”

He began his studies at the Boston College of Liberal Studies at the Shadowbrook Jesuit Seminary in Lenox, Mass. After four years, he continued his studies at Weston College, which was a constituent college within BC at the time, where he studied philosophy and worked toward a master’s degree in teaching mathematics for three years. After three years teaching at an all-boys boarding school, Cranwell, he returned to Weston College for theological studies, was ordained in 1961 and graduated in 1962.

Before beginning his position as WCAS dean, he was Provincial Secretary for the New England Jesuits and concurrently began working at the university as registrar of the Schools of Liberal Arts, Philosophy and Theology, and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Fr. Woods had various other responsibilities and various other jobs over the course of his life, including starting Bishop Connolly High School in Fall River, Mass., and serving as Adult Education Advisor to former president Jimmy Carter.

“I met monthly at the White House with a team of experts to facilitate the learning opportunities for a growing, diverse learner population,” he said. “This has been a lifelong commitment to each and [every] student eager and ready to begin their studies part-time.”

“Being responsive to the academic, financial and pastoral needs of the surrounding communities has been my responsibility these past 44 years,” Fr. Woods said. “Serving those students who dream of a Boston College education part-time in the Woods College of Advancing Studies and helping them make it happen has been extraordinarily meaningful for me.”

Cheryl Wright, coordinator of student services for the WCAS, began 30 years ago as a temporary employee filling in for her mother, but stayed ever since.

“He made this school what it is today,” she said. “It’s the love and respect that the students have for him that has made such a difference in their lives and in his life.”

Paul Nee, WCAS ’12, took two weekday classes and a Saturday class his first semester at BC. With two children and a full-time work schedule, he doubted his ability to handle such a full load when his Saturday class began a couple weeks after his other two. This day happened to fall on a football gameday, and as such, he was having trouble finding a place to park.

“I thought, ‘Something’s telling me this is too much for me,’” he said.

As Nee was driving home, however, he saw Fr. Woods standing out in the rain, waving a parking permit, looking for him.

“Here’s the dean of the school,” he said, “and he could have anybody stand out there, but he was there himself. To me, that’s him in a nutshell. He pushed open all the doors and all you had to do was go through them.”

The values instilled in him by his parents are still very important to him, Fr. Woods said.

“Guiding thousands through their educational, personal and spiritual journey with compassion and kindness reflects a deep commitment to improving the human condition with a sense of justice and love of ‘other.’ It brings me back to what was instilled in me by my parents—the sense that there is something greater to be done­­—so just do it.”

“It’s the pastoral care that I think a lot of people need and want,” Wright said.

Fr. Woods is the only employer who has thanked her for her work every night, she said, and he thanks his students similarly. “It makes a huge difference to know your worth.”

“The strength I draw from being part of something so worthwhile, daily restores me, invites me to grow and reminds me each day that I have been extremely fortunate to have such an opportunity to serve,” Fr. Woods said. “The Jesuit and the entire Boston College community has inspired and invigorated me each day, giving shape to a vocation filled with great joy and the desire to share with all how ‘the world is charged with the grandeur of God.’ I am very grateful.”

[The Heights - Student Newspaper of Boston College]

Jesuit Father Tri Dinh was among the thousands fleeing Vietnam at that time. Fearing religious persecution for their Catholic beliefs, Fr. Dinh and his family left Vietnam and resettled in Kansas.

Today, Fr. Dinh is an ecclesial assistant for the Christian Life Community (CLC) at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Christian Life Communities are rooted in Ignatian Spirituality, the guiding principles the Society of Jesus was founded upon, and help students deepen and enrich their faith life. The CLC young adults know Fr. Dinh as “Cha,” which means “Father” in Vietnamese.

In this Ignatian News Network video, Fr. Dinh discusses his work with young adults and how he’s learned to embrace social media and other tools to reach his flock. Showing that he’s conversant with the Millennial generation’s “digital natives” with whom he works, Fr. Dinh can also be found on Twitter at his handle @tdinhsj.

Fr. Conroy was a theology teacher at Jesuit High School when the opportunity to be House chaplain arose. He was sworn in May 25 of last year as the chamber’s 60th chaplain. In a recent interview with The Oregonian newspaper, he talked about the challenges of his job and issued one of his own to American citizens.

Is the House the most reviled congregation in the country? 

Well, I was a chaplain at San Quentin (prison, California), too — and I’m not making a comparison there.

But there is not a member of the House of Representatives who didn’t make a conscious choice to be a member of the House of Representatives. They knew what they were getting into. I don’t feel like I’m in a room full of people with an approval rating of 12 to 15 percent. That’s not part of my consciousness at all.

What does it feel like? 

I am chaplain to a room full of true believers, who are invested in what they stand for and what they are trying to do. A lot of members are quite faith-filled. Some are convicted, and they don’t have crises of faith. Others hope they are being faithful. It’s fascinating to watch.

How do you advise someone in that situation? 

Thomas Aquinas tells us to follow our consciences, to be honest with ourselves. If you can’t do that, then we have a crisis.

What’s it like to be well-schooled in Catholic social teaching as Congress grapples with the budget?

There is a strong theology at play: people who believe that taking care of the poor is what churches do, not what government does, that maybe government is over-reaching. But my position is to observe — not to engage in that argument.

I can hear social justice Catholic voices saying that I’m selling out the Gospel by not being that moral voice. But if I were to do that, I would not be in this position.

I’ve studied political science and my early ambition was to be in Congress. But I have prayed, do pray for serenity. I can’t have an opinion. In order to be chaplain I have to let go of this stuff.

What has the past year taught you about yourself? 

I’ve always had a soft spot for underdogs. I never rooted for Notre Dame or Georgetown because they always won. But when I was a campus chaplain, I was drawn to the students who didn’t fit the mold. I liked them.

And you’ve found people like that in the House? 

I have.

What do you say to Americans who have lost their patience with Congress?

Communicate what is important to you to your congressional representative. Even if your (candidate) lost the election, the rep is still representing you.

I pray that all members in Congress will hear the minority voice and that the American people will be prayerfully supportive of Congress and the president, who represent all of us. If we see this as a zero sum battle, it’s going to get ugly.

On Friday as I concluded taking my final vows in the Society of Jesus, I read the phrase, “At the altar of St Mary in St Mary’s Chapel, Boston College, Massachusetts, April 20, 2012.”  When I joined the Jesuits in 1993 at Canisius College, Pymble in Sydney, little did I know that I’d be halfway around the world almost two decades later.

On the occasion of my first vows, which were pronounced at the end of the novitiate in February 1995, along with three other men (including Jesuit Brother Kevin Huddy and Father Minh Van Tran), I spoke the words “I vow to your divine majesty, before the most holy Virgin Mary and the entire heavenly court, perpetual poverty, chastity, and obedience in the Society of Jesus. I promise that I will enter this same Society to spend my life in it forever.” At the end of the formula there is another prayer, which entreats God with the words “as you have freely given me the desire to make this offering, so also may you give me the abundant grace to fulfill it.”

They are wise words as the promise made then is that when one is called to final vows many years later one will then be ready to enter the Society completely, to be incorporated as a fully professed member of the Jesuits. Thus, our training and our testing, as envisaged by Ignatius and then experienced by countless generations of Jesuits, can indeed be long and arduous. Little did I know that as I gazed out over the deserts of the Kimberley region during a novitiate placement in 1994 (pictured, right) that I’d then end up being an academic in a Jesuit, Catholic university on the east coast of the United States.

And yet, in a way, this makes perfect sense in a Jesuit world. As we desire to enter the Society, so the Society desires to enable us to be all that we can be, for the good of our mission, which is to serve Christ’s poor and in so doing help build a better and more just world. Our congregations have articulated this desire in ever-more sophisticated (and lengthy!) ways over the past decades and one articulation of this that resonates with me is that we seek to be men on a mission, who seek a faith that does justice.

My Jesuit life has indeed been a peripatetic mission and has seen me live in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Canberra, as well as Paris, Hong Kong, Beijing, San Francisco and Boston. I’ve also had the opportunity to visit Pakistan, Cambodia, the Philippines, South Korea and Indonesia. My Jesuit journey has truly taught me that the faith that does justice surely also has to encompass the whole world, and as a Society we have to engage with the myriad and beautiful cultures of this world, at the same time as opposing those forces which prevent all people from being the glory and vision of God.

My own training and lifelong interest has focused on China – when it is not focused on watching rugby and other such things of import – and so it is that I am now teaching Chinese and Asian history at Boston College. I get to introduce non-Asians to the beauty and challenges of these cultures and in so doing help build bridges between China and the outside world. In my research I try to reclaim and retell – or even just tell for the first time – the wonderful stories of faith that have been and are being lived out in China and hopefully through that make such lives of faith a little easier, if only through their knowledge of being in solidarity with the universal church.

It is not where I imagined I’d be twenty years after driving in the front gates of Pymble all those years ago, and the physical distance from my Australian family and friends never gets any shorter (which is hard for all of us), but it’s been a great life. No life is ever perfect and full of laughter all the time, but I can safely say I’ve always been happy to be a Jesuit, a companion of Jesus.

The graces I’ve received through the people I’ve lived with – the Jesuits who’ve been my formators and companions along the way – and through the people I’ve been lucky enough to serve as a novice, a scholastic and now a priest, have indeed been abundant enough for me to fulfill my desire to enter the Society of Jesus as a fully professed member.

And so it was that on Friday, I did so enter the Society (pictured, below). Given the importance of that, the Mass was solemn yet celebratory. Tina Grant, an alumna of Boston College, wife of an ex-Riverview student Charlie Grant, and well-known to Australian Jesuit visitors to Boston because of the great hospitality the Grant family offers to all stray Aussies, read the first reading.

Then my brother Jesuits from Africa processed the gospel up the front chanting in Swahili where a Chinese Jesuit then proclaimed the gospel in Mandarin. (These men are all in graduate studies here at Boston College). Jesuit Father William Clark Russell, a New England Jesuit, preached the homily.

Much of the music was written by Australian Jesuit Father Christopher Willcock (the 2011-2012 Gasson Professor at Boston College), including a piece that was written for my diaconate ordination in 2001 (when I was ordained deacon with Fr. Minh Van Tran). A small schola of Jesuits and musicians associated with Boston College helped with all the music. The principal celebrant was Jesuit Father T. Frank Kennedy, superior of the Boston College Jesuit community, and the Provincial of New England, the Jesuit Father Myles Sheehan received the vows. We were joined in prayer by many Jesuits and some lay colleagues and friends, both from Boston College and from other places, and after dinner Jesuit Father Gregory Kalscheur gave a toast.

For me, it was not the ending of a journey but rather a wonderful and joyous celebration of a grace-filled vocation. It is my privilege to be but a small part of this least Society and for that I am grateful beyond words.

Photos:

Top: Fr. Jeremy Clarke at Balgo, Western Australia, in 1994. (Courtesy of Jesuit Father Harvey Egan)

Bottom: Fr. Jeremy Clarke pronouncing his final vows in Boston. (Courtesy of Jesuit Father Harvey Egan)

Since 1968, the Jesuits of the Chicago – Detroit Province have had commitment of service with Peru that continues to evolve and flourish today. These relationships between Jesuit provinces, called “twinning,” promote reciprocal sharing between the two and help strengthen and grow the Church’s presence and reach.

The first destinados, Jesuit Fathers Robert Beckman and Benjamin Morin, were missioned to Peru and arrived in Lima on October 28, 1960. Since then, more than 50 Jesuits have been sent out across the county, not only to serve the poor, but also fully embrace the culture and live among the Peruvian people in their communities.

Find out more about the work of the Chicago – Detroit Province Jesuits in Peru by visiting their website, which includes more information, photos, a podcast and a video with the Jesuits who are serving God’s people in Peru.

His golden wings gleam. His ruby robe glitters. He looks more like a doll than a dragon slayer.

But the saint is tougher than he seems.

He defeats evil. He grants prayers. With the raised sword fastened to his hand by a rubber band, San Miguel will protect a small remnant of an ancient tribe: a people who have lived here, unseen, for 12 years.

The long-lashed, fiberglass saint is a perfect copy of the one standing in a small church 2,400 miles away. San Miguel is the patron saint of Metlatónoc, a remote mountain town in southwestern Mexico where Richmond’s Mixteco people were born. They may never go home again, so they have brought their saint here, to Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Manchester.

In preparation for the saint’s arrival on this Saturday morning in late July, musicians strike up a song. Women arrive bearing bouquets of roses. A father makes the sign of the cross on his young daughter’s face with a white devotional candle, a veladora. He carries it to the front of the church, sets it in a metal stand and lights it. Other men join him, carrying candles, until the corner glows bright as a bonfire.

Around 10:30, nearly 200 people stand in the shade of a lop-limbed oak. The temperature’s already climbing toward 90 degrees. The Mixtecos sweat in their jeans and their suits and their skirts. The smell of incense mingles with perfume.

And then, it is time.

“Vamos aqui,” Jesuit Father Shay Auerbach says. Come here. Everyone crosses the street to stand outside the Sacred Heart Center, a former school that’s a nonprofit community center. Four men hoist a green canopy on poles to shade the saint. San Miguel appears in the doorway, wobbling on a white litter. Cell phone cameras are held aloft.

Auerbach asks God’s blessing on the saint. “The scripture teaches us that angels always accompany us,” he says first in Spanish, then in English. The statue will remind us, he says, that “the invisible angels guard us and protect us in our daily lives.”

The Mixtecos know what it feels like to be invisible.

There are more than 1,000 of them living in Richmond, clustered in houses off Jefferson Davis Highway. You’ve probably never noticed them. And that’s exactly the way they want it.

“They’re a world unto themselves,” Auerbach says.

The Mixteco are an ancient people. Their true name is the nuu maalsavi: the people of the rain. They bowed, but did not break, under Aztec and then Spanish rule, finding sanctuary in the mountainous regions of what is now south-central Mexico.

Approximately 500,000 Mixtecos live in Mexico and the United States, mostly in California. They speak more than 25 variants of their language, which is many thousands of years old. (Almost impossible to describe, the Mixtec language sounds nothing like Spanish. Subtle changes in tone, or the addition of an accented letter, can alter entirely the meaning of a word.) They make up the third largest native population in Mexico, where there are more than 10 million indigenous people.

The Mixtecos are one of several indigenous Hispanic groups in Richmond, says R. McKenna Brown, executive director of the Global Education Office at Virginia Commonwealth University. There are the Purepecha from the Michoacán region of Mexico, and multiple groups of Mayans. Just the other day, Brown found himself speaking Kaqchikel with a surprised Guatemalan Mayan in a CVS on Midlothian Turnpike. “We are more global and cosmopolitan here than some might imagine,” he says.

Mixteco immigrants have spread across California, Utah, the South and the Pacific Northwest, dispersed as widely as blown dandelions. But their family and town connections remain unbroken, says Arcenio J. Lopez, who is Mixteco and the associate director of the Mixteco/Indigena Community Organizing Project in Ventura County, Calif.

When they leave home, they go “hand by hand,” Lopez says. They tell their friends: “I know this place, let’s go over there. I know how to move, I know how to live over there.” And that’s how 1,000 Mixtecos from one tiny town in Guerrero end up in Richmond.

Rufino Leon was one of the very first to arrive. He came here with a handful of others in 1999, seeking the landscaping work he heard was available in Richmond. After that, “he talked with other people and they all began coming,” Auerbach says, translating for Leon.

Metlatonóc, the remote mountain home of Richmond’s Mixtecos, is one of the poorest places in Mexico. With his hand, Leon traces in the air a winding road, showing how difficult it is to get there. Everyone is devoutly Catholic. Many people speak only Mixteco, not Spanish, and can’t read or write. The houses are adobe and thatch, although in recent years, money sent home has allowed some to build with cinder blocks and concrete. Influenced by their American sisters, women have begun to wear pants.

Leon talks with his relatives by phone, but “no Facebook,” he says. There are no computers in Metlatonóc. “Es tranquilo, porque toda la gente son conocidos,” he says. It’s peaceful, because everyone knows each other.

Mixtecos are perceived by Americans and other Latinos as being secretive, even standoffish. But it’s not because the Mixtecos dislike outsiders.

“We’re coming from very specific rural communities,” Lopez explains. “The only thing we saw is our own people there, and our own life, closed there. So when we’re coming to big cities, and we’re coming to these new worlds for us, it makes us feel afraid. It’s a different culture.

“It makes us feel like, ‘How I’m going to say hello? How I’m going to saycómo estás in Spanish? If I don’t know how to say it, they’re going to start laughing at me.’”

These fears extend to their children. Translating for Leon, Auerbach says “they tell their kids really to stay among themselves, so that there won’t be problems. … You might play a little bit with [other kids], but that’s enough.”

The Mixtecos keep to their own small corner of Richmond. But on this Saturday, they’re stepping out.

To read the full feature, visit the Style Weekly’s website here: [Style Weekly]

“We want you to demand that we help you to meet Jesus of Nazareth. That’s what we want you to demand of us,” Fr. Foliot said. “We want you to demand that we be faithful to the tradition and interpret it in ways that can be understood in our secular time. We want you to demand that we be people who can open up a respect for creation so that we can be in right relation with creation.”

The Jesuits are celebrating 400 of years in Canada, a milestone commemorated during a recent dinner and awards ceremony in early April dedicated to the core Jesuit value of more — which, in the traditional language of St. Ignatius of Loyola, Jesuits call “the magis.”

If Jesuits are to lead the lives they are called to, they need lay people to constantly demand every dimension of Jesuit ministry, said Fr. Foliot. Over the last 50 years, Fr. Foliot has been a pastor at big-city parishes, a missionary in Northern Ontario and now serves as rector at Regis College, the Jesuit graduate faculty of theology at the University of Toronto.

“I don’t know if you know the power of lay people to call forth the priesthood in us,” Fr. Foliot said.

During the dinner on April 11, the Jesuits presented an award to Peter Warrian and Margaret Hovanec, a Toronto couple behind the Lupina Foundation. The foundation funds the Lupina Centre for Spirituality, Healthcare and Ethics at Regis College,

“What we receive from the Jesuits wildly exceeds anything we can contribute to the Society of Jesus,” said Warrian, an entrepreneur and former chief economist for the Province of Ontario.

Fr. Foliot was one of four Jesuits celebrating 50 years of Jesuit life at the 2012 Provincial’s Dinner. Jesuit Brother Bob Finlay, Fathers Doug McCarthy and Michael Stogre all entered the novitiate in 1962.

Find out more about the Jesuits of English Canada and the festivities honoring their Jesuit jubilarians at The Catholic Register.

One of Fr. Boroughs, S.J.’s first official events at the College of the Holy Cross was its academic convocation in late January, where he welcomed Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, ‘71 Holy Cross graduate, as he received an honorary degree.

With a tradition of academic excellence that dates to its founding in 1843, the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. is the oldest Catholic college in New England. This year, students and faculty welcomed Jesuit Father Philip Boroughs to the hillside campus as the college’s 32^nd president.

This piece below about Fr. Borough’s arrival to Holy Cross originally appeared in the Spring issue of their magazine. You can find out more about Holy Cross and its academics grounded in the Jesuit tradition via this link.

Jesuit Father Philip L. Boroughs moved into the president’s office at the College of the Holy Cross at the start of 2012 and began meeting as many members of the community as possible in his first few weeks. Making visits to various faculty meetings, introducing himself to staff through town hall-style gatherings, participating in student events and simply greeting people on campus have helped the former Georgetown vice president become acquainted with his new extended family.

“Holy Cross has the reputation of being a warm and engaged educational community, and I have discovered how true that is,” Fr. Boroughs commented after his first week. “I have been very moved by the kindness, generosity and genuine care that I have received from many individuals and groups on campus who have helped me to move in and get established. People are extremely friendly and welcoming and have gone out of their way to introduce themselves and offer assistance.”

The college’s new leader, who lists Dr. Nathan Hatch, president of Wake Forest University; Dr. Jack DeGioia, president of Georgetown University; and Jesuit Father Stephen Privett, president of the University of San Francisco; among the academic leaders he most admires, says that, though the learning curve for his new role is intense, the work is “exciting and energizing.”

Fr. Boroughs was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, and raised in Seattle. He earned his bachelor of arts degree from Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash., in 1973, and received a master of divinity degree from the Jesuit School of Theology (Chicago) in 1978. He later received a licentiate in sacred theology from the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley in 1987 and his Ph.D. in Christian spirituality from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif. in 1989.

Fr. Boroughs entered the Society of Jesus in 1967, was ordained a priest in 1978 and made his final vows as a Jesuit in 1986.

Students have had the chance to talk with their new president at several events. During the Martin Luther King Jr. Leadership luncheon in January, Fr. Boroughs told students, “It is important to know that leadership is not simply the consequence of your education, your talents or your desire. True leadership most typically happens when others call you to leadership in light of the gifts you have that match the needs of a particular time, place and circumstance.”

Asked how he prepared himself to take on the weighty mantle of becoming the 32nd president of the Holy Cross, Fr. Boroughs mentioned his sabbatical, during which he visited family in Seattle, British Columbia, London and Scotland; and friends in Portland, Ore., Ireland, Louisville, Palm Beach and St. Croix. “Having time to enjoy the beauty of the Northwest, time for a retreat and time to read and think was wonderfully rejuvenating,” he says. “Now, I look forward to living in a smaller city where one can really feel part of the life of the civic community, and I look forward to becoming part of this remarkable college.”

In September 2012, the college will celebrate the inauguration of Fr. Boroughs with several events, including a Mass and installation ceremony on Sept. 14.

Fr. Orobator is the Jesuit provincial for the East African countries of Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, South Sudan, and North Sudan. A Jesuit priest originally from Nigeria, he teaches theology and religious studies at Hekima College, Jesuit School of Theology and Institute of Peace Studies in Nairobi, Kenya.

A delegate to the 35th General Congregation of the Society of Jesus, he is considered one of the most brilliant of a new generation of Jesuit leaders worldwide.

“We are delighted to feature Fr. Orobator as our commencement speaker this year,” said Jesuit Father Kevin Burke, dean of the Jesuit School of Theology. “He is one of the most important theological voices in all of Africa and he is deeply respected in the theological community all over the world. We are especially proud of him as a graduate of our school, for he embodies the attributes we cherish in our graduates: a global vision of justice; a deep, rigorous, and rich theological perspective; and a culturally contextualized application of his faith.”

A stirring public speaker, Fr. Orobator is especially known for his writings in the areas of social analysis and ethics, and for his reading of the Christian dogmatic tradition in the distinctive light of African religious experience. In his recent book, Theology Brewed in an African Pot (Orbis Books, 2008), he examines such core Christian themes as God, Trinity, creation, grace and sin, Jesus Christ, Mary, the saints, as well as the meaning of theology itself with extraordinary depth, nuance, faithfulness to the tradition, and skill at rendering faith credible today.

Fr. Orobator received his Ph.D in theology and religious studies from the University of Leeds in England and his licentiate in sacred theology from JST. He received a bachelor’s degree in theology from Hekima College and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Institut De Philosophie, Saint Pierre Canisius in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

He has written or co-written numerous books on topics including Church as family, Catholic social teaching and social justice, Church mission in the age of HIV/AIDS, and African ecclesiology. Fr. Orobator is an advisory board member for the Jesuit Refugee Service, a board member of the Zaidi Centre for Lay Spirituality, and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Religion in Africa.