Examining the direction of Pope Francis
Jesuit Fr. Thomas J. Reese to deliver annual Faith and Knowledge Lecture at UPEI’s Don and Marion McDougall Hall on Nov. 29
The Saint Dunstan’s University Institute for Christianity and Culture’s fifth annual Faith and Knowledge Lecture presents Jesuit Fr. Thomas J. Reese with an examination of the direction of Pope Francis.
The event is Thursday, Nov. 29, 7 p.m., in the Alex H. MacKinnon Auditorium, Room 242 of UPEI’s Don and Marion McDougall Hall. All are welcome.
Reese’s column for Religion News Service, “Signs of the Times”, appears regularly in the “National Catholic Reporter”.
Reese entered the Jesuits in 1962 and was ordained in 1974. He was educated at St. Louis University, the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley and at the University of California Berkeley, where he received a PhD in political science. He was an associate editor of “America” magazine, where he wrote on politics, economics and the Catholic Church from 1978 to 1985 and editor-inchief from 1998 to 2005. He was also a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center from 1985 to 1998 and 2006 to 2013.
While at Woodstock, he wrote the trilogy on the organization and politics of the church: “Archbishop: Inside the Power Structure of the American Catholic Church (1989)”, “A Flock of Shepherds: The National Conference of Catholic Bishops” (1992), and “Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church” (1996). He also edited “The Universal Catechism Reader” (1990), an analysis of the first draft of the “Catechism of the Catholic Church” and “Episcopal Conferences: Historical, Canonical and Theological Studies (1989)”. He is also author of a NCR e-book, “Caring for Our Common Home: A Readers’ Guide and Commentary on Pope Francis’ Encyclical on the Environment” (2015).
In 2014, Reese was appointed by President Barrack Obama to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent, bipartisan U.S. federal government commission that reviews the facts and circumstances of religious freedom violations and makes policy recommendations to the president, the secretary of state and Congress. He was reappointed to another two-year term in May 2016.