In addition to Wildes, Sunday’s ceremony recognized Marlin Gusman, Orleans Parish sheriff; Wm. Raymond Manning, president and CEO of Manning Architects; Bill Summers, master percussionist; Jim Singleton, chairman of the Dryades YMCA; Dwight Payne, director of VIP Services for the House of Blues; and Stephen Perry, president and CEO of the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau.

The Martin Luther King Jr. Jazz Award honors individuals who have contributed to enriching their community, advancing cultural awareness through music and art, and furthering economic opportunity while adhering to the principles of non-violence.

Fr. Wildes, was appointed in July to the New Orleans Civil Service Commission. This appointment continues Fr. Wildes’ long-time record of service for the city. Following Hurricane Katrina, he played a key role in establishing the city’s Ethics Review Board and in setting up an independent Office of the Inspector General. Wildes currently sits on the Public Belt Railroad Commission.

“While I believe public service is always important, the challenges for post-Katrina New Orleans make public service even more vital today,” said Wildes. “New Orleans citizens are demanding, and rightly so, to live within a city government that functions transparently, efficiently and justly. I am honored to be able to assist in this effort.”

Jesuit Father Patrick J. Conroy invited all the members of the House of Representatives and their families to the holiday reception he was hosting last month as the chamber’s chaplain. He put out hot cider, cookies and a not-quite-functional chocolate fountain, and for the benefit of the children he picked up his folk guitar to perform “The House at Pooh Corner.”

Jesuit Father Jean-Baptiste Mazarati spoke to students, faculty and staff about the Jesuit ministry in Africa and his plans to return to the continent after receiving a doctoral degree from Georgetown. // Photo: Georgetown University

Two African Jesuits completing their doctorates in health care at Georgetown spoke to students, faculty and staff last week about their plans to return to the country to help their communities.

The talk, “Jesuits in Africa: The Hope of International Development” was part of Jesuit Heritage Week, which began on Jan. 29 and ran through Feb. 4.

“Jesuits are working in 28 out of 54 African countries today,” noted Jesuit Father Rodrigue Takoudjou.“We African Jesuits clearly perceive health care and education as priorities in our ministries.”

Fr. Takoudjuou, of Cameroon, is getting his Ph.D. in pharmacology, plans to teach at a Jesuit medical school in Chad.

One of the main health care issues that Jesuits are helping combat in Africa is HIV/AIDS, mostly through organizations such as The African Jesuit AIDS Network (AJAN).

“AJAN’s mission is to stimulate and coordinate the work of African Jesuits in responding to HIV and AIDS in an effective, coordinated and evangelical manner, culturally sensitive and spiritually grounded,” he explained. “The African Jesuits are involved in more than 100 HIV/AIDS initiatives throughout the continent.”

Fellow panelist Jesuit Father Jean-Baptiste Mazarati, of Rwanda, will teach at the state medical school in his country when he graduates with a doctorate in tumor biology in 2012.

“Africa stands in the world as a big question mark. So who will answer that question?” Mazarati said. “It is a question of endemic poverty. It is a question of endemic disease. It is a question of endemic conflicts. It is a question of lack of leadership. …It is a question of a continent that holds so much richness, yet is struggling to take off.”

Africa also has a large population of children, he said, so there is a strong need for educational advancements.

Jesuits are sending Rwandan priests around the world to seek higher education in the sciences, social sciences and development “to make sure that tomorrow we come back to Rwanda stronger,” and ready to teach, Mazarati said.

Carol Lancaster, dean of the School of Foreign Service, moderated the event. Katherine Marshall, a senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, also participated in the panel discussion.

“Jesuits have made such a contribution to this university and to the world,” Lancaster said.

The Jesuits’ personal stories of mission and ministry in Africa enlightened, yet posed more questions for some in the audience.

“The intersection between religion and African development is an extremely interesting field that must be further explored to fully understand the challenges and hopes of development,” said Vivian Ojo, who helped organize the event with Mariana Santos.

“The Jesuits provided some answers to some of the most difficult questions [plaguing Africa],” Ojo added. “I left the conversation with a desire to search for more answers about a topic not often explored.”

On April 4, 1968, the death of Martin Luther King Jr. shocked the nation. A few days later, Jesuit Father John E. Brooks, then a professor of theology at the College of the Holy Cross who shared Dr. King’s dream of an integrated society, drove up and down the East Coast searching for African American high school recruits, young men he felt had the potential to succeed if given an opportunity.

Among the 20 students he had a hand in recruiting that year were Clarence Thomas ‘71, the future Supreme Court justice; Edward P. Jones ‘72, who would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize for literature and Eddie Jenkins ‘72, who would play for the Miami Dolphins during their 1972 perfect season.

Now, the stories of their time at Holy Cross are being told in a new book, Fraternity, which follows the men through their college years, reporting on how their time at Holy Cross and their relationships with Fr. Brooks helped shape who they are today. In a recent interview, Fr. Brooks sat down with National Catholic Reporter to talk about the experiences that Fraternity was based on.

Jesuit Father John Brooks paused, his fork temporarily suspended above his apple crumble. The 88-year-old Holy Cross president emeritus, his West Roxbury accent clear and direct, told the National Catholic Reporter during lunch in the Hogan Campus Center, “Clarence Thomas called this morning — it was more of a joke really.” The U.S. Supreme Court justice, a former Holy Cross student of Brooks’, “wanted to know did I really have a tear in my eye.” Thomas was referring to the concluding line in an excerpt from Diane Brady’s book Fraternity, reprinted in the fall 2011 Holy Cross Magazine, that ran, “One of the students saw Fr. Brooks standing to the side, slipping out quietly with tears in his eyes.”

Joked Thomas, on the phone to Brooks, “You never shed a tear.”

Brooks hasn’t had much time for tears. Toughness was required when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination impelled then theology professor Brooks into an East Coast recruitment drive for African-American students. Regardless of how historically salutary his decision, in the short term it brought neither tranquility nor harmony to the college.

To accomplish even the first steps, Brooks needed the support of the somewhat besieged Holy Cross president, Jesuit Fr. Raymond J. Swords. Both men engaged in a great deal of persuasive argument to eventually quell consternation among the trustees, uproar from the alumni, divisions among the faculty, and doubt, dismay and/or anger among the white students. It certainly didn’t help with the endowment drive. Not least, there was the matter of $80,000 in scholarships Brooks had promised to those he recruited.

When Brooks was growing up in West Roxbury, he said, it was all white, “and it’s still all white now.” At Boston Latin, there were perhaps a handful of black students in a 2,400-student body. His first exposure to the College of the Holy Cross, was with his dad, a New England Telephone Company divisional manager, bringing him to the football games. “Those were the days,” he said, nostalgically about the Holy Cross team. Yet when he enrolled at Holy Cross in 1942, he had one black classmate. “I don’t know how he survived the four years, the isolation.”

With World War II under way, Brooks was soon in uniform and spent three years in Europe. “The Army was segregated then.” Postwar it was back to Holy Cross, one of 300 25- to 28-year-old GI college freshmen and sophomores. He studied geophysics with a view to oil exploration, graduated, then headed to Penn State for graduate studies. “I found I missed the Jesuits for some reason, but I didn’t feel that way when I was at Holy Cross.” He applied to enter the Society of Jesus, was told to go back and finish graduate school, but to his surprise was called to enter early in 1950. It was an era, he noted, when any black Jesuits were usually assigned to Jamaica.

By 1963, after graduate work in theology at the Gregorian in Rome, he was back at Holy Cross. What happened while in Rome, he said, was “one of the great gifts in life God has given to me — the Second Vatican Council opened.”

Back in the United States racial tensions were rising. Then came King’s assassination. Fraternity recounts in detail Brooks’ East Coast recruiting excursions.

Asked if it was tough to convince the black students to attend Holy Cross, even with the promise of scholarships, he replied, “Yes. First they saw it as a Catholic school. Then they saw it as an all-white school. What I probably emphasized was the importance of a quality education. They were students who took academic life seriously. One of the things that bothered me was their likely isolation.” Brooks felt the only answer was to give the black students their own residence. “We received a lot of criticism — we couldn’t do anything to overcome the isolation issues without being criticized. Everyone’s goal was to make the students all the same. Well, you can’t just do that, it takes time.” It took more than that when, in 1969, to protest perceived college racism in a judicial review, 65 black students quit Holy Cross in protest.

That same year, Swords asked Brooks, now college dean, to cover alumni groups. “Because it was I and not he, they clobbered him in front of me: very blunt, hard, negative. I always defended him. I admired him. It was a good thing he didn’t hear it.” The next year, Brooks was named president.

He had a second goal: admitting women students. “The coeducation push probably generated more alumni negativity than anything. The black situation was more nasty, they said mean things, the words used. It was awful.”

Even so, Brooks prevailed. He prevailed again in his determination to keep Holy Cross as a top-flight liberal arts college.

There was one graduate program, in chemistry. As president, “I got rid of it. It was a struggle. Of the 28-29 Jesuit colleges, we’re the one that held the fort for undergraduate education. There’s always a fight. A fight with admissions to make sure you’re getting the quality of students you want. I wanted Holy Cross to be as good as, or better than Amherst or Williams.”

Brooks still teaches, and he’s still a tough taskmaster. He interviews each student he admits to his course in contemporary Christology. “I come down hard at the very beginning. I tell them I expect them to be there for every session. Expect them to do the readings. I base my acceptance on their willingness to read, their habit of reading. Each student marries a theologian — Hans Küng, [Karl] Rahner, [Edward] Schillebeeckx, [Jon] Sobrino, [Dietrich] Bonhoeffer. At the end of semester they have a two-and-a-half hour oral exam. I bring in outside examiners. They’re petrified. At the end there’s a little reception, a dinner of students and examiners — and they’re very happy, for they’ve proven to themselves they’ve learned something. I’m very committed to the liberal arts. I think we acquired a reputation for high ratings, we get them. You may disagree with them but you have to be in there.

“That’s why I was so happy with the first group [of African-American students he recruited]. They were so good academically and intellectually.”

The Fraternity five still keep in touch. As do so many of the others, black and white.

Fr. Devron has come full circle in many ways. In 1995 he was a Jesuit novice in Chicago when he witnessed the beginning of the country’s first Cristo Rey school, Cristo Rey Jesuit High School, while attending the press conference announcing that the Jesuits were starting the school.

Christ the King, which follows the Cristo Rey work-study model, opened at a temporary site with 120 students in 2008, and its brand new building opened in January 2010.

Ignatian News Network met up with Fr. Devron to learn more about the man behind the collar.

Fr. Browne, widely recognized as a skilled photographer, was often described as Ireland’s answer to Cartier-Breson. He first started taking photographs in 1897 and did so until his death in 1960.

So what was included in these negatives? The invaluable collection of photographs and mementos, which had been sitting in a Dublin basement, featured one-of-a-kind images of the Titanic, before it departed on it’s first and final voyage. Upon realizing the discovery, a collection of the images was published in 1997 known as ‘Father Browne’s Titanic Album.’ As the 100th anniversary of the boat’s sinking approaches in April, many of the photographs in the book have been digitally re-mastered and new photographs have been added for the centenary edition of the book.

As the story goes, Fr. Browne boarded the Titanic in Southampton and several days later he was ordered off the boat in Cobh, County Cork in Ireland by his Jesuit Provincial. An American couple offered to pay his fare to America, but unbeknownst to Fr. Browne, when his superior requested that he return to Dublin, his life was potentially saved.

“When Father Browne’s superior ordered him off the ship it essentially saved his life because very few men travelling in first class survived the tragedy when the boat sank,” said Fr. O’Donnell. “While he was having a meal in the first class dining room he got chatting to a wealthy American couple. They liked Fr. Browne and asked him to stay on the Titanic with them until the boat reached New York. The American couple even offered to pay the rest of his fare to New York but Fr. Browne told them that his superior in Dublin would never allow it so he had to get off the ship when it stopped in Cobh.”

“The American man said to Fr. Browne, ‘come on down to the Marconi room and we’ll send him [the Jesuit superior] a Marconigram (a message sent via radio) and we’ll tell him that we’ll pay your way to New York’. When Fr. Browne went down to the Marconi room he took a picture. It was the only picture to be taken of the room – and any films you’ve ever seen that have had the Marconi room in it based it on Fr. Browne’s photograph.”

The telegram was sent by the wealthy Americans to the Irish superior of the Jesuits but after the Titanic stopped in Queenstown in Cobh, Fr. Browne was instructed to return to Dublin. The water near Queenstown in Cobh wasn’t deep enough for the Titanic to dock so the only way it could be reached was by another boat called the Ireland.

“The Ireland set off towards the Titanic with bags of mail and the 123 Irish passengers who boarded the ship. Captain Tobin was in charge of the Ireland and he had a small envelope addressed to Fr. Browne. Inside was a note with five words on it – it read: ‘Get Off That Ship – Provincial’.”

“Fr. Browne kept the note in his wallet for the rest of his life and said that it was the only time that holy obedience saved a man’s life,”  said O’Donnell

Fr. Browne used what time he had to photograph the Titanic when it arrived in Cobh. One photograph shows a man climbing one of the ship’s large funnels and at the time it was regarded as a bad omen.

“The superstitious people of Cobh said when they saw it that no good could come out of the ship’s journey and that the man in the picture was not a man at all – they claimed that he was the devil.

“The picture shows a tiny black dot on the fourth of the ship’s funnels and it’s actually been confirmed that the black dot was an Irish stowaway who boarded the ship at Southampton. Apparently he climbed down the funnel into the room where the mail was being kept and his pals put him inside one of the mail bags and he was loaded on to the Ireland and managed to get home to his native Cobh.”

Fr. Browne’s photographs have been used as evidence to support  facts about the Titanic.

One of the most contentious issues which split opinion amongst Titanic experts was whether the ship divided into two after it hit the iceberg on April 15, 1912.

Dr. Robert D Ballard, the former US Navy officer who discovered the wreck of the Titanic in 1985, used Fr. Browne’s photographs to confirm that the boat had in fact split in half.

“When Dr. Ballard discovered the wreck he found that the boat was in two pieces almost half a mile apart.”

“Some survivors said that the ship split in two just before it sank whilst others said it went down in one piece. No one knew who to believe.”

“When Robert Ballard found the boat it was solved for all time. Ballard used photographs taken by Fr. Browne to explain why the boat split in two. It was because of the grand staircase that the boat split – it was nine stories high and was the weakest part of the ship. If the Titanic was going to split anywhere it was going to be where the grand staircase was.”

“The Titanic actually split down the middle of where Fr. Browne’s room was because his bedroom was in one half of the wreckage and his living room was in the other half almost half a mile away. Fr. Browne’s documentation of the Titanic was so concise that Oscar winning director James Cameron used his photographs as a reference when designing the ship’s bridge for his 1997 movie ‘Titanic’.”

“A friend of mine is the secretary of the Titanic Historical Society and was advisor to James Cameron’s movie about the Titanic. He had all of Fr. Browne’s photographs and told Mr. Cameron that he had forgotten to consult them when designing the set. Mr. Cameron then used Fr. Browne’s photographs to redesign the bridge of the boat.”

He added: “I hope people still enjoy the book. It’s a wonderful documentation of life on the ship before it sank. It’s poignant that we have released it again to mark the 100th anniversary.”

[The Derry Journal]

The event, presented by the University’s Center for Catholic Studies, will take place in the Egan Chapel of St. Ignatius Loyola at 8 p.m.

In a talk entitled, “Olivier Messiaen: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” Fr. Schloesser, associate professor of history at Loyola University Chicago, will chronicle the young life of this artist who was greatly inspired by his Catholic beliefs. He will start by exploring Messiaen’s parents, especially his mother Cecile Sauvage and her poetry, punctuating the talk with Messiaen’s compositions while emphasizing the evolution in his writing. The lecture will provide attendees with an intricate look at Messiaen, his mother, and his wife Claire, and how their relationships so deeply affected the composer’s early works.

Educated at Stanford, Fr. Schloesser has explored such intriguing subjects as Jazz Age Catholicism and Mystic Surrealism as Contemplative Voluptuousness. He was a faculty member of Boston College, a Bannan Fellow at Santa Clara University, and an adjunct professor in the Department of Church History at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology.

The Bellarmine Lecture series was set up to bring distinguished Jesuit Scholars in a variety of disciplines to Fairfield. For information on other Center for Catholic Studies events, visit http://www.fairfield.edu/cs/.

[Fairfield University]

A recent addition to Brophy is Loyola Academy, which provides a Catholic, Jesuit education to 6th, 7th, and 8th grade boys who demonstrate academic promise but have had limited educational opportunities. Loyola Academy currently serves one class of sixth grade boys, and will add a new sixth grade class for the 2012/2013 school year.

Fr. Reese recently spoke with us by phone from Phoenix to discuss the work of Loyola Academy and about his own background as a Jesuit. You can listen to our podcast with Reese via the player below.

“Everybody has a vocation,” he said. “God is no further from ourselves than we are.”

Here, Fr. Sullivan’s mission is to help spiritual seekers grow in their relationship with God and in willing service to their neighbor. He compared a relationship with God to a human friendship.

“They have the same dynamics,” he said. “If you want to be friends with someone, spend time with him — listen to him.”

His calling to the priesthood came gradually, a gentle nudge throughout his high school and college years.

“I don’t think it was any one moment of time,” he said.

When he inquired about the possibility of a vocation, he was advised to go to college first.

Sullivan attended the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., one of the nation’s leading liberal arts institutions that embraces a Catholic/Jesuit identity. There, he majored in history.

“Eventually I thought about the Jesuits to be both a priest and teacher,” he said. “I got to know quite a number of Jesuits, many of them in their late 30s and 40s, who seemed interesting and happy.”

When Sullivan graduated in 1973, he was at a crossroads.

“I did apply to do graduate work in history or American studies and got accepted in a couple of places, or I could join the Jesuits,” he said.

Sullivan has spent time teaching high school in Maine and Massachusetts and also as a parish priest.

“I was open to another couple of years of parish work. I enjoyed being pastor,” he said. “But as things evolved, I ended up at Eastern Point Retreat House in Gloucester.

Noted for the spectacular beauty of its rocks, ocean and woods, the retreat house provides an idyllic environment for contemplation and prayer.

This is Sullivan’s third year as a member of the staff, which includes four Jesuits and a Sister of St. Joseph.

Based on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, the retreats are open to people of diverse backgrounds and traditions who are seeking God in their lives.

“How do you see where God may be calling you? Sullivan said. “It is where your deepest desires intersect with the community’s deepest needs.”

You can read more about Fr. Sullivan’s experiences and about the Eastern Point Retreat House at SouthCoastToday.com.

Fr. Luedtke is a native of Chicago and a graduate of St. Ignatius College Prep and Georgetown University. After working in retail sales and marketing after college, he entered the Society of Jesus in 1999. He taught and worked in campus ministry during his three-year regency at Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Chicago. Upon completion of his studies at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, he was ordained to the priesthood in 2010. For the past three semesters, he has been interning at Jesuit high schools in Sacramento, San Francisco, and New York City. In January, he will move to Detroit and begin immersing himself in the Loyola community.

As a member of Loyola’s Board of Trustees, Fr. Luedtke is very familiar with the school and is fully committed to its unique mission that has been fostered so carefully by Fr. Mastrangelo and Loyola’s staff.

To read the full announcement from Fr. Mastrangelo and other news in Loyola High School’s “Landmark” magazine, click here.

To view a video featuring Fr. Luedtke reflecting on his Jesuit vocation, click here.