Take a look at some of Schwalbenberg’s most eclectic possessions in the second installment of our What’s on My Desk series, where we highlight interesting objects displayed by professors in their offices. 

A Goodbye Gift from the People of Micronesia

Schwalbenberg’s office is home to dozens of trinkets and souvenirs from his travels and those of his students. Among them is a model of an ocean-going canoe—a goodbye gift from the people of Micronesia, where he worked for three years. Also pictured here are cups from a state fair in Minnesota, where his great-great-grandfather settled after immigrating from Germany.

A Photo with the President of the Philippines

Among the mementos is a framed photo of Schwalbenberg hooding Benigno S. Aquino III, the 15th president of the Philippines, when he received an honorary doctorate from Fordham in 2011.

A Photo of Ms. Schwalbenberg

Schwalbenberg also has a framed photo of his wife, Alma, whom he met thanks to Jesuits in the Philippines. “I was teaching at Ateneo de Manila University, and some of the Jesuits there introduced me to her family. At the time, I was studying at Columbia. Her family told me that she was studying at Fordham. They arranged an introduction. She told me she wanted to learn how to ice skate, so I took her ice skating, but she actually had no interest in learning how to ice skate. That was just a ploy,” Schwalbenberg said, chuckling.

The Dorothy Marinucci Bell

Hot Sauce from New Orleans for President Tetlow

Sitting on his desk are two brand-new bottles of cajun hot sauce from Tulane University. At a graduate school fair for returned Peace Corps volunteers, a Tulane recruiter gifted Schwalbenberg the hot sauce to celebrate Fordham’s president, Tania Tetlow, who grew up in Louisiana and both studied and worked at Tulane. “I was thinking I should give it to her,” said Schwalbenberg, who is not a fan of hot sauce himself. When asked if he could handle spice, he answered, “Probably not.”

The ‘You’ve Got Five Minutes’ Timer

In front of his chair is an hourglass reserved for students. “I give my students a hard time. When they come in and say, ‘I only need a minute to talk to you,’ I say, ‘OK, you’ve got five minutes,’” Schwalbenberg said, while turning over the hourglass. “They usually stay beyond that.”

Schwalbenberg I and Schwalbenberg II

His most unique possession is a life-sized cardboard cutout of himself, a birthday gift from former IPED students. “Sometimes I put it in people’s offices and scare them,” Schwalbenberg admitted. 

Behind the two Schwalbenbergs is a world map that encapsulates his decades spent traveling, teaching, conducting research, and attending conferences, as well as the diversity of countries that his students hail from. 

His favorite country is Micronesia — the first place that felt like home outside of the U.S. He spent three years on an island in the middle of the western Pacific Ocean, teaching at a high school and studying the relationship between his two homes. “They adopted me,” joked Schwalbenberg, who lived in Micronesia in his 20s. 

The IPED Program

Schwalbenberg’s students in the IPED master’s program prepare for careers improving food security, education, and gender disparities abroad. For undergraduates, Fordham offers a major in international political economy. 

International experience is important for students, said Schwalbenberg. “We think they are going to be better people for that, having a deeper understanding of how other people live. We hope it makes them better professionals in whatever career they choose.” 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

An alumnus of the program, he had traveled to the U.S. in the summer of 2010 with nine other South African students for six weeks, studying alongside students in Fordham’s graduate program in International Political and Economic Development (IPED), part of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS).

“There is something about having that program on my resume that I think has certainly made a difference and was a signal to potential employers,” said Venter, who is now an economics consultant in Pretoria and who joined the nearly 100 participants at an Aug. 19 celebration.

“Now that I’m doing the hiring, I tend to look twice to see if they did attend these sort of summer classes.”

The Emerging Markets program, which began in 2008 and continues today, is open to all IPED students and students from South Africa’s University of Pretoria. Students learn about monetary and fiscal policies and explore issues of economic partnership between South Africa and the United States.

In addition to classes, in both locations, they visit businesses as well as labor and government representatives. Each year, about 15 South African students visit New York in June, and an equal number of Fordham students visit South Africa in August.

When Venter’s cohort came to New York City in 2010, they attended classes on political risk analysis and finance and visited Washington D.C., Broadway, and the U.S. Stock Exchange.

A Promise Fulfilled

The Emerging Markets program originated with a conversation between Fordham President Emeritus Joseph McShane, S.J., and Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who visited Fordham in 2005 to accept an honorary doctorate.

Booi Themeli, Ph.D., a senior lecturer of economics and a native of South Africa, said Father McShane told him the archbishop had joked that in return for his visit, the University would have to do something for South Africans.

Three years later, the first cohort of Fordham students traveled to South Africa, and five years later, Venter’s cohort traveled to the U.S. To date, 208 Fordham students have visited South Africa, while 213 South African Students have visited Fordham.

Henry Schwalbenberg, Ph.D., director of the IPED program, said the goal was to create an opportunity for South Africans who traditionally weren’t part of the educational system to get an advanced degree.

“It really tied in with the end of Apartheid, the establishment of a wider democracy, and Fordham making a contribution to empowering the people who were left out,” he said.

A Transatlantic Romance Blossoms

Elena Konopelko, GSAS ’13, came to the Bronx in 2011 from St. Petersburg, Russia, on a Fulbright scholarship to study with the IPED program.

She joined the Emerging Markets program and visited South Africa in the summer of 2012. There, she met Sokhana Caza, GSAS ’13, an alumnus of the program who was now a program assistant.

The following fall, he returned to the Rose Hill campus to earn an IPED master’s, and the two reunited. They married in 2016, and today, they share a home in Johannesburg with three children.

Konopelko said living in three different countries has opened her eyes to different approaches to business and academia.

“There are so many different options in how to conduct yourself professionally and how best to learn that you can make your own path forward,” she said.

Fireflies and Real-World Lessons

Studying in New York City was life-changing for Caza. Times Square and the subway were new to him, but there were also smaller, unexpected moments—like seeing fireflies on a warm July evening at Rose Hill.

“I’d never seen them in my whole life. Just watching them at night, it was probably one of the most memorable moments of my time,” he said.

After nine years working for BP and Bloomberg, Caza now works for a financial technology firm affiliated with the Singapore Stock Exchange.

“The thing that I really liked when I got [to Fordham IPED]was that most of the professors had experience working for a corporate or financial institution,” he said.

“When they taught, it wasn’t all theory; it was always related to the real world.”

Changing Lives, Changing Families, Changing the World

Ann Gaylin, Ph.D., dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, said the August reunion was one of the most moving experiences she’s had in her career.

“There was such a sense of joy and energy in the students. It wasn’t just about changing lives but changing families and changing the world,” she said.

Margaret Chitiga-Mabugu, Ph.D., dean of the faculty of Economic and Management Sciences at the University of Pretoria, credited the program with creating global leaders.

“I have seen first-hand how the program enriches the student’s academic knowledge and provides a platform to interact with influential business leaders and policymakers,” she said.

“It not only benefits the students who participate; it has created opportunities for staff members at the University of Pretoria to enlarge their networks and has created prospects for future collaboration.”

Watch students from the 2023 cohort visit New York City last summer below:

Selwin Hart, special adviser to the secretary-general on climate action and assistant secretary-general for the Climate Action Team at the United Nations, addressed students and staff about the recent developments in climate negotiations at the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference (COP 26) held in Glasgow from Oct. 31 to Nov. 12 of this year.

Hart, a 2000 graduate of the Fordham IPED program, offered his thoughts on how the world must act in the face of the pandemic recovery and worsening climate crisis.

“Geopolitical tensions point to confrontation, competition, and potential conflict at a time when collaboration, cooperation, and solidarity are needed more than ever to ensure an inclusive recovery and to address the climate crisis,” he said.

Hart was the Cassamarca Lecturer at the “Climate Change and UN Call to Action” event delivered in Tognino Hall. The event was hosted by Fordham’s Graduate Program in International Political Economy and Development (IPED) and co-sponsored by Fordham Students for Environmental Awareness and Justice.

Hart said that at the Glasgow climate negotiations—the most consequential climate negotiations since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015—efforts were made to create multilateral agreements focused on addressing key issues concerning climate change.

The first goal from the conference was to keep the 1.5°C of warming goal within reach, which is the warming threshold agreed upon by most climate experts needed to avoid catastrophic damages from climate change. In other words, the world needs to limit greenhouse gas emissions such as carbon dioxide—the cause of rising temperatures—in order to limit the rise in Earth’s temperature to only 1.5 °C.

“The 1.5 °C goal is alive, but it is on life support, it will depend on what happens this decade, and more importantly in the next two to three years,” he said,

The second goal was to have developed countries deliver on their commitment to supporting emerging economies with $100 billion in climate financing, which Hart said should be completed by 2023. The third and final goal was to develop support for countries that are already facing climate impacts. An agreement was made on this front to double climate adaptation funding by 2025.

Hart said that the U.S. and China issued a joint statement at the conference committing to work together on climate-related actions, which he noted is substantial given the current geopolitical tensions.

Hart remains optimistic about the progress made at the negotiations, but he knows that challenges lie ahead.

“Multilateralism is at a crossroads; for multilateralism to be effective it needs the support and leadership of the largest players like the U.S. and China, but the voices of the smallest players in the international community also must be heard. It is imperative that they are heard and not sacrificed.”

Coming from the small island nation of Barbados, Hart has a unique perspective on these issues. He explained the triumph of the small island states, who, with the U.N., were part of initial the coalition to push for the 1.5 °C warming goal, and through the tools and levers of multilateralism, were able to successfully advocate and advance it.

Hart gave his warm appreciation to IPED Director Henry Schwalbenberg, Ph.D., who, over 20 years ago, offered Hart a fellowship to study at Fordham, which he says launched his career. Since then, Hart has been a chief climate change negotiator for Barbados as well as the ambassador of Barbados to the United States, prior to being appointed to his current U.N. position.

To bring the discussion closer to home, Marc Conte, Ph.D., of the Fordham Department of Economics delivered remarks on climate and climate action within the United States. He highlighted the importance of information in future actions and argued that if we do not have the correct information, or if real estate and other commodities are not indicative of perfect information, we will not be able to treat the climate crisis with the urgency it deserves. He pointed to the example of multimillion-dollar properties still being sold on Florida waterfronts, even with the threat of sea-level rise.

He also connected the issue to health.

“If we had more information about these benefits and costs to society of adverse health outcomes, we might be more willing to contribute and collaborate,” he said, adding that the U.S. can and should be a global leader in climate, as it has been the biggest cumulative emitter of greenhouse gases throughout history.

In closing, Hart connected the discussion on multilateralism with climate action by saying we should “try hard at all times to understand, in the true Fordham style, the perspectives and views of those that are across the table. There is always hope for finding common ground.” He emphasized that while progress is incremental, he still believes we can solve the climate crisis.

–Kevin Strohm

The index was developed by IPED students to help the public understand the plight of the poor on a global scale. 

On his return from Rome, Schwalbenberg stopped by the Catholic University of America to present the results of the poverty index and meet with IPED alumni in the Washington, D.C., area.

“In addressing us, Pope Francis encouraged us all ‘to sow many small seeds that can bear fruit in an economy that is equitable and beneficial, humane and people centered,’” Schwalbenberg wrote in an e-mail.

Through Fordham’s Pope Francis poverty index and the training of professions to work in agencies like Catholic Relief Services, he wrote, “this is what we are trying to do.”

“Economists are usually more concerned with money, wealth, and income, not so much with health. But health should come before money,” Deaton said at the Lincoln Center campus on Sept. 24—his first “non-Zoom” presentation in 18 months. “Money and health means very little if you’re not alive to enjoy it.” 

Deaton was the keynote speaker at the fourth event of the biennial conference “The Health of Nations: Pope Francis’ Call for Inclusion,” co-hosted by Fordham’s Graduate Program in International Political Economy and Development (IPED) and the U.S. affiliate of the Vatican foundation Centesimus Annus Pro Pontifice. The goal of the conference is to bring together international experts to address poverty and development issues raised by Pope Francis through the lens of Catholic social teaching. Deaton was joined by several speakers, including Frank J. Caggiano, bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport, Connecticut, and award-winning economist and University of Notre Dame professor Joseph P. Kaboski for a moderated discussion. 

Deaton’s work is a critical part of Fordham’s IPED curriculum, said Henry Schwalbenberg, Ph.D., program director and associate professor of economics. 

“His work on measuring poverty guides our stuents in preparing our annual publication of Fordham’s Pope Francis’ global poverty index, and his writing on deaths in the tropics is at the core of how we teach our students about public health issues in the developing world,” Schwalbenberg said at the conference. “Because of Professor Deaton’s exceptional writings as well as the outstanding professional field experiences provided by Catholic Relief Services, our students are that much more prepared to understand and contribute to international efforts to reduce—hopefully, reduce—global poverty.” 

Many global health inequalities are driven by low infant and child mortality rates in poor countries, said Deaton. The U.S. can help them by requesting that organizations like the National Institutes of Health research more diseases that greatly impact poorer countries, he said. The U.S. government can also increase the distribution of global public goods, like the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, to countries that desperately need them. In addition, the U.S. can reduce arms sales, he said. 

“America makes huge amounts of money through exporting arms. I don’t know what we think we’re doing when we’re sending aid to countries at the same time we’re selling arms to them,” Deaton said. “When my students come to me and say, ‘What should we do to help people in poor countries?’ … I say, ‘The country you should go to is Washington, D.C. and you should tell people to stop harming people in poor countries.’ We can do a tremendous amount of that without actually going there and pretending to help or trying to help.” 

What doesn’t work very well, he said, is transferring monetary funds from rich to poor countries, what we commonly view as “aid.” What those countries need more than money is an “internal social contract” between the government and its people, he said. 

“We complain about our government, but we mostly pay our taxes … and in exchange, they give us all these things—police, defense, roads, laws, health, pensions and education—and that’s because we’re organized in a way that in exchange for our taxes, the government can give us these things back,” Deaton explained. It is the lack of this “contract” that is characteristic of poor countries. In other words, he said, financial aid from rich countries often prevents the governments of poorer countries from being held accountable for their people. 

“The governments don’t bother to look after their people because they don’t need to. Most African countries get more than 70% of the government budget from aid … You cannot get development without an internal social contract, without an internal community first. Whatever we do, we should try not to destroy that,” Deaton said. 

But the U.S. has its own problems to deal with as well, he said. Since 1980, adult life expectancy has steadily risen in rich countries across the world, but the U.S. is an exemption, said Deaton. Many Americans are dying “deaths of despair,” including accidental drug overdose and suicide. A large part of that population lacks a four-year college degree. They have been facing a declining labor market thanks to robots, globalization, and the increasing costs of health care. This loss of jobs has had negative ripple effects across their financial, social, and mental well-being, he said. 

“The key takeaway is that [in]the labor market, jobs for people without a four-year college degree have been vanishing … jobs that really gave meaning to people’s lives, gave them a chance at promotion,” Deaton said. “This failing labor market has brought social dysfunction in many forms and in many communities across America.”

In the pandemic, the less-educated and minorities have continued to suffer, while the rich and those with pensions in the market have increased their wealth. This division is troubling, said Deaton.  

“We really have built ourselves a two-class society in which the happy few are doing well, and the two-thirds are increasingly not being recognized as full citizens,” Deaton said. “One of the issues about inequality that I think is the key one is equality of moral standing within society. We want not equality of opportunity—we want equality of outcome … We’re all moral individuals within equal dignity, and that’s failing in America.”   

Watch a full recording of the conference below:

“This year’s report will give us a baseline to document the extent of extreme poverty in our world prior to the pandemic,” Henry Schwalbenberg, Ph.D., director of IPED, wrote in the introduction to the document. “Our mission in future reports will be to document the immediate and lasting effects of the pandemic on the world’s most vulnerable people.”

The students’ work was spotlighted in a virtual program produced by America Media and the Sovereign Order of Malta’s Mission to the United States and released on YouTube on Nov. 12. The program featured several prominent speakers, including Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof; Donna Markham, O.P., Ph.D., the first female president to lead Catholic Charities USA in the organization’s 105-year history; and Maria-Francesa Spatolisano, assistant secretary general for policy coordination and inter-agency affairs at the United Nations. The event was co-sponsored by the Holy See, two United Nations missions, and other Catholic organizations. 

The annual report was inspired by Pope Francis’ address to the United Nations General Assembly in 2015. Over the past five years, IPED students have researched and published a new annual index that explores statistics and trends related to seven factors that the Pope identified as poverty indicators: water, housing, employment, food, gender equality, religious freedom, and education. Unlike many poverty indexes, IPED’s index has a strong emphasis on basic human needs and outcomes that can benefit the poor and the marginalized, said Schwalbenberg. The report also includes indicators of spiritual freedom like gender equity. 

“Newly developed indexes are adding a multidimensional definition of poverty,” Schwalbenberg explained in a 2016 Fordham News story. “We’re hoping that [our index]will empower civil societies … We want groups around the world to use this simple measure to hold their governments and other administrations accountable for the state of their society.”

Their fifth annual index builds on global data that is released every year. In the 2020 index, IPED students graphed global trends from 2013 to 2017, mapped the 2017 data to better visualize geographical disparities worldwide, and identified the 10 countries that most lacked each basic human need. (Last year, the students mapped data from 2016.) They found some improvement in water, employment, and education, but deterioration in food, housing, and religious freedom indicators across the world. The gender indicator has stayed stagnant. In addition, the students found that material deprivation is highly concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa, while spiritual deprivation is more predominant in Asia. 

The 64-page report was not only highlighted at the virtual event but also distributed to event registrants across the world, including members from the United Nations and the Vatican. It was also featured on America Magazine’s website. 

It’s not the first time the index has received prominent attention. Last year, Schwalbenberg and IPED students presented their index to His Eminence Cardinal Pietro Parolin, secretary of state for the Vatican. In 2017, they introduced their findings to Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, secretary of relations with states in the Holy See’s Secretariat of State. 

When Sydney Kornegay was still a teenager growing up in Columbia, South Carolina, her father took her with him to Malawi, where he was putting together a promotional video on behalf of Ministry of Hope, a Christian community-based orphan care organization.

The experience left a lasting impression on Kornegay, who is graduating this year with a master’s in international political and economic development (IPED) from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

“My dad was a journalist who was interested in stories on the edges that don’t get heard, and from the voices on the edges that don’t get heard,” she said.

“We often had people from different countries in our home, and when I first went to Malawi with him, he interviewed local people who had dedicated their whole lives to helping their communities. That just grabbed me.”

In the years since, Kornegay has visited Africa several times to help in aid efforts. In September, she and three other IPED graduates will devote themselves to projects run by Catholic Relief Services (CRS): Owen Fitzgerald will move to Madagascar, Therese Hart will move to Niger, and Jessica Way will move to Lebanon.

The four were part of a group of 20 selected from roughly 700 applicants to participate in the CRS International Development Fellows Program.

Henry Schwalbenberg, Ph.D., director of the IPED program, said the fellows program is training ground for people who have the potential to assume senior management positions in international humanitarian and development assistance. Fordham traditionally sends just two graduates, he said, so sending four makes 2018 an especially auspicious year.

“We’re providing key people that these organizations need in order to carry out the Catholic Church’s mission for international relief and development efforts,” he said.

Fordham’s relationship with CRS goes back two decades, and in fact, the heads of CRS missions in Uganda and the Philippines are IPED graduates. Fellows have gone on to assume leadership roles at other relief agencies as well.

“What makes Catholic Relief Services important is they’re the only program that has consistently had a program like this,” he said.

“In a certain sense, CRS is providing the link for people coming out of graduate school to enter this field.”

For Kornegay, her experience volunteering with groups such as the Episcopal Service Corps, which she worked with before she came to Fordham, gave her a sense of how aid should ideally be administered.

“I was looking for graduate programs that focus not just on how we make a community grow economically, but

how we consider all the different factors that make a healthy community. IPED has a more holistic critique of development,” she said.

Her fellowship, which starts in September and lasts a year, will take her to Haiti. CRS’ emphasis on empowering local partners is a big draw for her.

“There’s an emphasis on not what they can do for the community, but what the community can do for itself. I was looking for organizations that prioritize empowering local partners to carry out work, as opposed to taking a top-down approach,” she said.

The tool, known as Fordham’s Pope Francis Global Poverty Index (FFI), was presented publicly on Sept. 23 in conjunction with a University-sponsored conference, “Pope Francis’ Call to Escaping Poverty.”

The FFI focuses on seven simple factors that the pope sees as indicators of poverty, and which he proposed at last year’s United Nations General Assembly: water, housing, employment, food, gender equality, religious freedom, and education. The innovative focus of both the pope’s proposal and the FFI is on political rights for the poor; few other poverty indexes distinguish these freedoms as vital indicators of poverty, said Henry Schwalbenberg, Ph.D., director of IPED.

“Studies show that there is, in fact, a connection between these spiritual indicators and hard economics,” he said. “Newly developed indexes are adding a multidimensional definition of poverty—and it’s a really great thing.”

By allowing those who are impoverished to improve their physical, economic, and mental well-being, they will be able to live independently and become “dignified agents of their own destiny,” as Pope Francis has described.

“We’re hoping that [our index] will empower civil societies,” said Schwalbenberg. “We want groups around the world to use this simple measure to hold their governments and other administrations accountable for the state of their society.”

The 37-page FFI compiles statistics that civil organizations can use as a benchmark to determine the material and spiritual state of their populations, and work to improve them through the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals. While finding statistical data on most of the indicators was relatively simple, Schwalbenberg said, researching the connection between religious freedom and poverty proved difficult. In fact, it is a pioneering approach to looking at the issue.

“This aspect is ignored by many people but shouldn’t be. Religious freedom has a correlation to corruption and social hostility, which is why countries try to take religious freedom away,” said Schwalbenberg.

The report is being made available for download on Fordham’s IPED site over the next weeks. But this is only the start of the FFI, said Schwalbenberg, since now it is up to the people of the world to take it and adjust it to their own circumstances.

“This index isn’t set in stone; we want it to be expanded upon by other schools or communities. We tried to be as transparent as possible so people can make their own index. People will interpret Pope Francis’ speech differently and weigh different indicators more heavily than others. This is only the beginning of the process.”

The day’s event also served as a venue for Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, to install Archbishop Bernardito Auza as the inaugural holder of the endowed Cassamarca Foundation Chair in Migration and Globalization. Archbishop Auza is the U.N.’s Observer of the Holy See.

“We are honored that you have accepted this post,” said Father McShane.

In addition, the conference featured lectures by Sabina Alkire of Oxford University; Liliana Carvajal, GSAS ’04, monitoring specialist of UNICEF; and others. It was co-sponsored by CAPP USA and was part of the University’s Dodransbicentennial celebration.

— Mary Awad

Henry Schwalbenberg, PhD, head of Fordham’s International Political Economy and Development program (IPED), and two of his students, Josh Voges and Elizabeth Shaw, will attend various events related to the climate summit. The students will work at a five-day event for organizations worldwide that excel at sustainable development, and Schwalbenberg will attend an awards ceremony where they will be honored.

The goal of the events, sponsored by the U.N. Development Programme’s Equator Initiative, is to show the gathered delegates how local communities and indigenous groups worldwide can advance climate-protection goals, said Schwalbenberg.

“A lot of times, U.N. agencies only deal with governments. They don’t get down to the grassroots level,” he said. “But these are grassroots organizations that are involved in all sorts of things around the world in very poor areas where they’re helping people maintain their livelihoods and at the same time protecting the environment.”

As Arrupe Fellows in the IPED program, Voges and Shaw have been working two days a week with the Equator Initiative in preparation for its award ceremony and related events surrounding the climate conference. On Dec. 7, at the awards ceremony Schwalbenberg will attend, the Equator Prize will go to 20 local and indigenous organizations to honor their efforts to protect the environment and address poverty and climate change impacts.

Their projects might focus on biodiversity, forest protection, sustainable agriculture, protection of communities’ land rights, or partnerships with the government or private sector. This year’s award winners come from Asia and the Pacific region, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Sub-Saharan Africa.

From Nov. 26 through Dec. 1, the Equator Initiative is hosting a series of dialogues among the award winners in Paris. In talking with each other and with outside experts, they’ll share best practices and hone their narratives so they can better present their stories to the delegates at side events surrounding the climate talks.

“These are the kinds of solutions that I think a lot of policymakers are pretty interested in hearing about,” said Voges. “How can we live without making as big of an impact on the environment? A lot of the answers, we think, could be found in seeing how indigenous communities are stewards to the lands that they’ve inhabited for so many centuries.”

Voges and Shaw will help organize the dialogues and provide translation and other support.

Last year’s award ceremony—held at Lincoln Center in New York City in support of the U.N. Secretary General’s Climate Summit and the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples—was “incredibly moving,” said Shaw.

“The audience was full of heads of state, diplomats, and celebrities, all cheering for indigenous people leading grassroots work,” she said. “It felt like the world was in right order to see these groups receiving the praise they deserve for bravely addressing climate change effects each day. Our hope is that the negotiations in Paris further this support so indigenous people and local communities can scale their work in a political environment which encourages their innovation and protects their rights.”

“The world offers us many reasons for fear and despair these days, but the Equator Prize winners are a source of hope,” she said.

That was the message of Joseph F.X. Zahra, the Vatican’s new lay economist, who gave a luncheon presentation to Joseph M. McShane, SJ, president of Fordham, and to administrators and University trustees on Oct. 9 at the Rose Hill campus.

Zahra, former head of Malta’s Bank of Valletta and a former director of that nation’s central bank, spoke to 50 members of the University community at an invitation-only event focused on new developments at the Vatican curia.

Among other measures, the Vatican has established a Council for the Economy, a Secretariat for the Economy, and an Auditor General. These new agencies, one of which reports directly to the pope, will regularly conduct audits and apply international accounting standards to the Vatican’s financial operations, said Zahra.

Zahra was chosen in July 2013 by Pope Francis to oversee the revamping of the church’s finances, which had endured some “controversy and question marks surrounding their management.” That’s according to one sponsor of Zahra’s New York visit, the Centesimus Annus Pro Pontifice Foundation, CAPP-USA, the U.S. affiliate of the Vatican Foundation for Lay Catholic Leaders.

Zahra visited Fordham during a three-day tour of New York, which was also co-sponsored by Fordham, Fairfield, and Notre Dame universities, said Henry Schwalbenberg, PhD, director of Fordham’s Graduate Program in International Political Economy and Development and a member of the sponsoring CAPP-USA.

The reforms are “not an end in themselves,” according to Zahra, but are also a means to save money that could be used to fund programs for “the poor and the marginalized,” in accordance with Pope Francis’ mission for the church.

Zahra gave his presentation at Fairfield on Nov. 8 and was scheduled to deliver the talk at Notre Dame on Nov. 10.

On June 18, Pope Francis officially released his encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si (“Praised be You”). Members of Fordham’s theology faculty were quoted in several news sources, explaining what it is, its rarity and monumental importance, and what the ultimate message may mean for the world’s Christians and other religious groups.

Christiana Peppard, PhD, assistant professor of theology, science, and ethics: What you need to know about Pope Francis’s environmental encyclical, in the Washington Post.

Michael Peppard, PhD, assistant professor of theology: Pope Francis’s Earthquake in Commonweal Magazine.

Charles Camosy, PhD, associate professor of theology: Pope calls climate change a ‘moral imperative’: Will US Catholics listen?, in The Christian Science Monitor.

J. Patrick Hornbeck, II, associate professor of theology: The Church Challenges the State to Take Radical Action on Climate Change, at the blog TakePart.com.

Terrence Tilley, PhD, Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ, Professor of Catholic Theology: The Pope & Climate Change, on CBS News.

In addition, five members of Fordham’s faculty gave their pre-encyclical thoughts on the event a few days before the release:

Christiana Peppard:

Claudio Burgaleta, SJ, associate professor of religion, Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education:

C. Colt Anderson, PhD, dean of the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education:

“The encyclical is going to generate opposition, so Pope Francis going to have to frame it within a broader understanding of Catholic ecclesiology, the authority of the pope, and the nature of moral teaching itself… A lot of conservative Catholics are vocally opposed to the pope saying anything about the environment. Yet, the fact that the pope is discussing these issues is not new. For instance, John Paul II released the Common Declaration on Environmental Ethics in 2002, which was framed in terms of social justice teachings… [The difference was that] as long as Catholic conservatives in the United States saw themselves as supported by John Paul II and Benedict XVI, they could overlook statements about the environment and social justice and focus on their key issues—homosexuality, birth control, and so forth. Now, however, they are more willing to directly oppose the pope…I don’t think that the opposition to the pope on these matters within the church is very deep, but it is very organized and it tends to come from the wealthier component of church, so they have a disproportionate ability to be heard. The pope needs to try to win this component over. It’s not about winning or losing—it’s his pastoral duty. And that’s part of the reason why it’s so important that he frame these arguments using doctrinal language.”

Henry Schwalbenberg, PhD, professor of economics and director of the International Political Economy and Development programs:

“No matter which side of the climate change debate you are on, most of us can agree that environmental changes and natural disasters have an undue impact on the poor.  I remember a study some of my colleagues did in the Philippines on the effect of urbanization and unregulated car pollution on the cognitive ability of young children living in squatter’s areas along congested highways. My colleagues measured the level of lead poisoning as well as the serious cognitive damage that emissions had caused among the children.  Since that time, leaders have successfully worked to restrict lead emissions in the Philippines and have given these children a fighting chance for a better future.

“I am confident that Francis will encourage all of us to work on behalf of our poorer brothers and sisters who desperately need additional resources to confront environmental challenges. We Americans are doing this is through our various foreign aid programs … [In] the Philippines we are assisting local communities in building typhoon resistant housing, … and in poor arid areas of Latin America such as Northeast Brazil we are supporting efforts to develop reliable sources of potable water, [both]efforts to promote economic development that is ecologically sustainable and targeted to benefit the most vulnerable. In his encyclical, as well as his UN address in September, Francis will be encouraging us to do even more and to do it even better.”

Christine Firer Hinze, PhD, professor of Christian ethics and director of the Francis and Ann Curran Center for American Catholic Studies,

“In issuing this major teaching document, Pope Francis brings fundamental Catholic convictions about the dignity and flourishing of human beings and the rest of God’s creation into dialogue with the pressing social and global realities of our day. He relies on scripture, Catholic tradition, and the best scholarly and scientific knowledge available to us today, drawing on the work of the Vatican’s own distinguished panel of scientific advisors, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences—80 of the most distinguished scientists from around the world, including Nobel laureates. Earlier this year, the Academy of Sciences held an international gathering, “Climate Change and the Common Good,” whose final statement affirmed that “human-induced climate change is a scientific reality,” and that work to mitigate it, and especially its effects on the poor, is a “moral and religious imperative for humanity.”

Read an article about the Encyclical in Fordham magazine.