In April 2012, encouraged by the call made by the Society’s 35th General Congregation to promote international networking, a group of 26 Jesuits and 7 lay partners from 10 countries gathered at Boston College to discuss the issue.

“I think of all of these graduates of schools, of parishioners, of lay people working in Jesuit institutions and of all the students, and if those folks felt they were part of a broader network, it seems to me that there’s a really incredible opportunity to get a lot done,” says conference participant Chris Lowney from Jesuit Commons, one of the most promising new examples of Jesuit collaborative efforts at a global stage.

As a result of the conference, a final document has been released and is available on a newly launched website, www.jesuitnetworking.org. The initiative has also opened channels for a global conversation on the topic through social media, including Facebook and Twitter. All Jesuits and collaborators are invited to join those platforms to explore future emerging collaborative networks.

“It’s very important that we collaborate and integrate our common mission and work together,” says Jesuit Father Xavier Jeyaraj, who serves in the Jesuit Curia in Rome and attended the conference.

Watch the video below to learn more about the networking initiative and hear from conference participants.

Jesuit Artist-in-Residence Father Robert VerEecke performing (above center). Photo by Boston College Magazine.

Jesuit Father Robert VerEecke, the longtime pastor of St. Ignatius Parish at Boston College, is also a dancer, a choreographer and the Jesuit Artist-in-Residence at Boston College, earning him the nickname “the dancing priest.”

Fr. VerEecke also founded the Boston Liturgical Dance Ensemble in 1980 to perform in church venues, and each Christmas the troupe produces a show. For 28 years, that show was “A Dancer’s Christmas,” a holiday tradition in Boston until 2008. For the past four years Fr. VerEecke’s ensemble has been performing “Christmas Reflections,” which includes an almost 80-member cast of professional dancers, Boston College students, alumni and others. The story reflects on the meaning of the season through Luke’s Gospel.

Fr. VerEecke was recently interviewed by the Boston Globe about his calling to the priesthood and to dance. The interview is below, along with a video of Fr. VerEecke discussing “Christmas Reflections” that shows the dancers in action.

Q. Are you a priest who happens to be a choreographer, or are the two inextricably combined?

A. They’re inextricably combined. When I think of Catholic ritual, there’s so much movement and choreography. What makes ritual work for people is a sense of flow and movement integrity. I work with young Jesuits and try to help them understand that sense of the larger picture. It’s such a passion, for me there is no separation between religious expression and movement expression. It always comes together quite spontaneously. It’s when I’m most alive.

Q. What happened when you were called to the priesthood at age 18?

A. I entered the Jesuits thinking I’d never have a chance to do anything artistically. Then in 1970, the Jesuits organized an artist institute and they had a track to study ballet, and I took that. When I started taking class, it was an epiphany. It gave me the vocabulary for choreographing, but the advantage of not having early training was that I was never set in a particular language of moving, so my choreography tends to be more from within. I feel free to use whatever comes.

Q. I know with all the “Nutcracker”s this time of year there was intense competition to get performers for “A Dancer’s Christmas.” Was that part of why you stopped the production after 2008?

A. The challenge was always mounting such a big production and trying to replace people every year without a huge budget, particularly male dancers. But the real issue is that I was very aesthetically pleased with the work that had evolved, so I said this is the last year. It had become absolutely perfect for me. It had reached its apex.

Q. But the very next year you were back with “Christmas Reflections” How did that come about?

A. There were all these children who were heartbroken that “A Dancer’s Christmas” was ending, and it got to me. We were all crying — one of my nicknames is Sobby Bobby. I just couldn’t say this is the end, so I said I’d try to think of what else we do, not on the same scale. “Christmas Reflections” is like “A Dancer’s Christmas” in miniature, like one of those little [snow] globes, very delicate and charming.

Q. “A Dancer’s Christmas” used pageantry, modern dance, ballet, and folk dance to tell the Christmas story from three historical periods. How different is the new show?

A. The pieces are shorter. It uses a lot of familiar Christmas music. The three-act format is still very similar. This first is scriptural, the second has the playfulness, the third has some of the repertory of the third act of “A Dancer’s Christmas.” One of the new pieces we added, which is a lot of fun, is “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” with the dancers representing all the characters. A local championship Irish dancer, Helen O’Dwyer, a BC alum, was a dancer for a number of years in “A Dancer’s Christmas.” I asked her if she thought her school might want to participate, and now there are 30 to 40 Irish dancers. We have a guest artist, Jamaican contemporary dancer Steven Cornwall, portraying Joseph, and he’s a spectacular dancer. He brings a beauty and strength that is very powerful to watch.

Q. You’ve always maintained that “A Dancer’s Christmas” created a unique sense of family and community among the performers. Have you been able to re-create that?

A. It’s what’s kind of magical about it, because people put a lot into it, and the story draws people in. A lot of people listen or sing these songs, especially more traditional carols, but they never had a chance to dance to them, and it can be powerful for them. “Silent Night” is the final number, with children joining adults in the end, and there’s something quite moving about seeing it all unfold.

Q. At the core, what do these shows mean to you and perhaps to the others who come to them year after year? What is the takeaway message?

A. It’s about the profound sense of joy that is available to all of us in the Christmas season, no matter how we celebrate it. From a religious point of view, it’s about God loving us so much that he wants to dance with us. These days there’s so much negative about God and salvation. My image is that God is enmeshed in the flesh of Jesus. He wants to have arms and legs so he can dance with us.

From left: Jesuit Fathers William Neenan, Joseph Appleyard and James Woods. Photo by Gary Wayne Gilbert.

Despite their youthful outlook and demeanor, the three Jesuit priests pictured here have a staggering 120 years of combined service at Boston College.

Jesuit Father James Woods, ’54, M.A.T.’61, S.T.B.’62 (right) joined the university in 1968 as dean of the Evening College, which at his urging became the College of Advancing Studies in 1996. In May 2002, the school was renamed the Woods College of Advancing Studies. After 44 years, Fr. Woods stepped down as dean in May 2012.

Jesuit Father Joseph Appleyard, ’53, S.T.M.’58, H’12 (center) started his career at Boston College in 1967 as a member of the English faculty. Beginning in 1987, he served for 10 years as director of the Arts and Sciences Honors Program before being appointed founding vice president of the Office of Mission and Ministry, a post he held until 2010, when he was asked to take a senior administrative position with the New England Province Jesuits.

Jesuit Father William Neenan (left), an urban economist, arrived from the University of Michigan in 1979 as the university’s first Thomas I. Gasson, SJ, Professor. From 1980 to 1987 he served as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, before becoming academic vice president and dean of faculties. Since 1998 he has been vice president and special assistant to the president. He has presided at 225 Boston College-related marriages.

The three were photographed this past summer in front of the statue of St. Ignatius on Boston College’s campus.

—Boston College Magazine

Fr. Devino, who this year marked his 25th year as a priest, brings experience as a veteran administrator who has developed programs in the areas of campus ministry, student formation and vocational discernment.

“Fr. Devino knows Boston College well and brings substantial experience from his work here and from his previous assignments at Fairfield University and the University of Scranton,” said University President Jesuit Father William P. Leahy. “He will be an engaging presence among our students, faculty and alumni.” [Boston College]

Jesuit Father Gregory Kalscheur, an associate professor at Boston College Law School, has been named senior associate dean for strategic planning and faculty development in the College of Arts and Sciences.

In his new post, which he will assume in August, Fr. Kalscheur will assist in reviewing academic programs and in the school’s faculty hiring process.

Fr. Kalscheur, who will continue to teach a course in civil procedure at BC Law, said his job as A&S senior associate dean represents a “natural evolution” in his vocation and academic career.

“Undergraduate liberal arts is at the heart of the Jesuit educational mission,” Fr. Kalscheur said. “I see this appointment in A&S as connecting with my background as both a student and a teacher in the Jesuit tradition.” [Boston College]

The sculpture was created in clay by local artist Janie Belive, who works at Campion Center in Weston, Mass., where Fr. Skehan is in residence. Vincent J. Murphy, James Lewkowicz and Robert O. Varnerin—longtime friends of Fr. Skehan—commissioned the bronzing of the sculpture. The bust’s base, from the Le Masurier Family Quarry in North Chelmsford, Mass., is made from Chelmsford Granite, one of Fr. Skehan’s favorite rocks. The bust is on display in BC’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, which was founded (as the Department of Geology) by Fr. Skehan in 1958.

Many colleagues and friends joined Fr. Skehan at the Apr. 25 event. John Ebel, Boston College Earth and Environmental Sciences professor and Weston Observatory director, gave an address that served as a retrospective on Fr. Skehan’s career. A reception with birthday cake followed, hosted by BC’s Jesuit Community and the Earth and Environmental Sciences Department.

Fr. Skehan is a renowned geologist whose research has focused on the history of the Avalon terrane, the geological micro-continent stretching from Long Island to Belgium upon which Boston lies. From 1973 to 1993, he directed BC’s Weston Observatory, which monitors seismic activity around the globe.

He is the author of Roadside Geology of Massachusetts, a 400-page illustrated guide to the geological history and makeup of the Commonwealth. He followed that with Roadside Geology of Connecticut and Rhode Island.

Fr. Skehan has been honored in special ways during his storied career. In 2003, Mount Holyoke College paleontologist Mark A. S. McMenamin named a new genus of trilobite in Fr. Skehan’s honor. Skehanos is a marine arthropod that lived more than 500 million years ago and whose fossil was discovered in Massachusetts.

Author Sarah Andrews created a fictional Fr. Jim Skehan character for In Cold Pursuit, her mystery novel set in Antarctica. Fr. Skehan is also the recipient of the American Institute of Professional Geologists’ Ben H. Parker Memorial Medal, honoring individuals with long records of distinguished and outstanding service in the field of geology, among other honors.

A man of science, Fr. Skehan is also a man of deep faith. Growing up, his family said the rosary regularly after dinner. He entered the Jesuit order in 1940 and was ordained in 1954.

A noted retreat and spiritual leader, he is the author of Place Me With Your Son: Ignatian Spirituality in Everyday Life and of Praying with Teilhard de Chardin, on the life and thought of French Jesuit paleontologist and philosopher de Chardin. The convergence of geologist and priest was profoundly on display when Fr. Skehan said the first Mass on the volcanic island Surtsey soon after it rose off the coast of Iceland.

Fr. Skehan sees no conflict in his devotion to both science and faith, telling the Boston College Chronicle:

“If you look at a beautiful sunset, or how mountains are formed, or observe how continents move, you can view it either as science or as God speaking to you, or both. I do both. What I do as a scientist is no different from what I do listening to the cosmic word of God. It’s nice to have both [science and faith] – in fact, it makes everything so exhilarating. What could be more marvelous?”

[Boston College]

Winners of the Finnegan, given to the student who best exemplifies the BC motto, “ever to excel,’’ tend to go big – top grad schools, Wall Street, overseas fellowships. Kennedy is planning to give away his computer, recycle his Blackberry, and move to a modest communal house in St. Paul, Minn.

He will get $75 a month for incidentals. He will have no romantic relationships. He will go where his superiors ask him to go, and do what they ask him to do. If all goes well, Kennedy – “Dan-o’’ to his friends – can hope to be ordained a Jesuit priest in 2023.

Entering a religious order straight out of college is rare these days, particularly for a standout student at an elite school. One or two graduating BC seniors enter seminary each year, but never in recent memory has a Finnegan winner done so.

“Um, I could never see Dan-o on Wall Street,’’ Shannon Griesser, a junior, said, laughing. “I’ve never met such a kind human being, to the core.’’

But he is hardly a “laxbro,’’ either, as one of his theology professors, Stephen Pope, quipped. (The term is slang for a lacrosse-obsessed frat brother.)

Medium height and solidly built, the bespectacled Kennedy keeps his room in military order, his comforter neatly folded, paper clips and pens exactingly arrayed in his desk drawer. He uses words like “unitive,’’ as in, “There’s nothing more unitive than enjoying a meal together.’’ There is no self-consciousness in his voice when he talks about his motivation for becoming a Jesuit: “My personal relationship with Jesus Christ.’’

“It’s the love I feel from God, and how I want to reciprocate that,’’ he said.

“I’m not entering the church of 50 years ago or 500 years ago. I’m entering the church in 2012,’’ he said. “So you have to be realistic about the challenges of the images of priesthood in this day and age. . . . I don’t find it daunting, but it’s going to be a challenge.’’

Many of his closest BC friends are religious – but many are not. Florence Candel, an atheist who said she arrived at school with “a lot of anger at the church,’’ developed a strong friendship with Kennedy, who presented a face of Catholicism that Candel said she had never seen before – open, accepting, and embracing her questions as invitations for conversation. “Dan-o just basically taught me that to say I have a lack of faith is incorrect,’’ she said. “I obviously have faith in some things. Maybe not the same faith as people around me have, but that’s OK.’’

Candel still calls herself an atheist, but she sometimes participated in the informal “examens’’ Kennedy held for friends in his room on Monday nights. A cornerstone of Ignatian spirituality, the examination of consciousness is a ritual of prayerful reflection on daily life.

For 15 or 20 minutes, the group would sit together in Kennedy’s dorm room, a suite shared with three roommates, and silently consider questions Kennedy posed: “Where did you encounter God today? When could you have been more loving? What were you grateful for?’’

The daily examen is just one of the ways Kennedy continued to explore Jesuit life. In addition to attending Mass at least once a week, and getting to know the Jesuits on campus, he began to meet with a spiritual director, Jesuit Father William B. Neenan, BC’s vice president and special assistant to the president.

Kennedy will spend the first two years doing a series of “experiments’’ imitating the life of St. Ignatius, including a 30-day silent retreat, stints working at a hospital and with the poor. He will study a foreign language, and he will go on a pilgrimage with just $10 in his pocket and a letter from his superiors to speed his progress.

After the first two years, Kennedy will be sent to study philosophy for three years at a Jesuit university; then he will probably teach at one of the Jesuit high schools in the province. In the following three years, he will earn a master’s of divinity, preparing him for ordination.

Find out more about Kennedy’s considerations and expectations as he plans to join the Society of Jesus this August in this Boston Globe article.

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 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]

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)

In 1995, Jesuit Father Don MacMillan, a newly minted campus minister at Boston College (B.C.), was approached by a student interested in honoring the memory of the six Jesuits and two lay partners who had been massacred in 1989 in El Salvador.  That chance encounter led Fr. MacMillan on the path to a long and fulfilling new role as a social justice activist, a commitment that will be honored tonight as the Ignatian Solidarity Network presents its “Robert M. Holstein: Faith that Does Justice Award” to Fr. MacMillan.

The Holstein award honors one individual annually who has demonstrated a significant commitment to leadership for social justice grounded in the spirituality of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus. The award’s namesake, the late Robert (Bob) M. Holstein, was a former California Province Jesuit, labor lawyer, fierce advocate for social justice and one of the founders of the Ignatian Family Teach-In for Justice (IFTJ) – the precursor to the Ignatian Solidarity Network.

The first memorial service commemorating the El Salvadoran victims was organized by Fr. MacMillan and the Boston College students on the B.C. campus, but by the next year, the group had taken their commemoration to Fort Benning, Ga.  Here, they held a prayer vigil at the gate of the U.S. Army School of the Americas in order to call attention to the school that, according to a U.S. Congressional Task Force, had trained those responsible for the executions in El Salvador.

Over the years, thousands of students have been empowered by Fr. MacMillan’s teaching and ministry. At Boston College, Fr. MacMillan coordinates the Urban Immersion Program, a weeklong experience of prayer and service for undergraduates to learn about the lives of those in Boston suffering from poverty and homelessness. He also organizes an annual trip to Cuernavaca, Mexico, where B.C. students have direct experience with Latin American refugees and the poor of Mexico.

Fr. MacMillan earned two Boston College degrees: a bachelor’s degree in 1966 and a master of divinity degree in 1972. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1960 and was ordained in 1972.  He previously served as both a teacher and administrator at Boston College High School and Bishop Connolly High School.

The Ignatian Solidarity Network (ISN) promotes leadership and advocacy among students, alumni, and other emerging leaders from Jesuit schools, parishes and ministries by educating its members on social justice issues; by mobilizing a national network to address those issues; and by encouraging a life-long commitment to social justice grounded in the spirituality of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Since the Ignatian Solidarity Network’s inception in 2004, Fr. MacMillan has been an integral part of ISN’s effort to mobilize a national network of leaders committed to justice grounded in Gospel teachings.

The previous “Robert M. Holstein: Faith that Does Justice Award” honorees include Jesuit Father Charlie Currie, former president of the Association of Jesuit Colleges & Universities; and Jesuit Father Steven Privett, president of the University of San Francisco.

Learn more about the “Robert M. Holstein: Faith that Does Justice Award” at: www.ignatiansolidarity.net/holstein.

With this background, School of Theology and Ministry Associate Professor, Jesuit Father Andrea Vicini, is uniquely equipped to study the complex, and often controversial, ethical issues that have emerged in the wake of technological and scientific advances in health and medicine.

“Fr. Vicini is one of the few specialists in medical ethics who is both a physician and a theologian. His broad international background gives him keen insight into the importance of the social and cultural contexts of medical practice,” said Jesuit Father David Hollenbach, the University Chair in Human Rights and International Justice.  “BC and its students will benefit greatly through his presence.”

“Part of the task and responsibility of reflecting theologically on [ethical] issues,” said Fr. Vicini, who joined the STM faculty last fall, “is that you need to combine different elements that are relevant for theological thinking. First is the tradition — theological insight from other theologians in the past and the present. Second is the magisterial, or official, teaching. The other is the experience of the people. This way the universal and the particular are given consideration.”

When dealing with the end of life, he says, the Christian tradition is to see it as a process and to consider the patient’s consciousness, identity and network of relationships. Ethical challenges, however, arise from the interaction of new technologies and end-of-life issues, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which can be used to determine if brain-injured patients previously thought to be in a vegetative state may, in fact, be reclassified as being in a minimally conscious state.

The technology is still very primitive, but the concept raises issues such as possibility of recovery, access to quality rehabilitative care and family support, according to Fr. Vicini, whose article on this topic will be published later this year in The Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics.

Another emerging field of interest for Fr. Vicini is oncofertility, which looks at preserving the fertility of cancer patients. “Advances in cancer treatment for children and young adults have the positive result of recovery but also the negative result of infertility. Technology is available now that can be used to preserve fertility and restore, not only the patients’ health, but their wholeness.” He wrote on the topic of ovarian tissue transplantation for the journal Theological Studies.

A native of Italy who earned his medical degree from the University of Bologna, Fr. Vicini was born with a physical deformity affecting his left hand. He wanted to become a doctor “to help people, to heal and cure. The experience of disability in my life has helped me feel close to people in need.” He was drawn to pediatric practice in particular, he said, because of its holistic nature and opportunity to build relationships with patients and their families. “You get to witness the healing power of medicine in a special way.”

Discernment led Fr. Vicini to join the Society of Jesus in 1987. “I was attracted to the Jesuit commitment to help people in need in various frontiers around the world through education, social justice work and interactions between scientists and other religions and cultures.” He was ordained a priest in 1996.

To read the full story about Fr. Vicini at Boston College, please click here: [Boston College's New Bioethics Professor]