“The U.S.-Mexico borderlands is a place where the Earth just swallows up bodies,” says Leo Guardado, Ph.D.

He doesn’t mince words about the humanitarian crisis at the border. In May, 144,278 migrants were taken into custody by the U.S. Border Patrol, the highest monthly total in more than a decade. And each year, the agency finds hundreds of corpses—the remains of men, women, and children who died traversing the vast desert and mountain regions on both sides of the dividing line.

The Trump administration’s efforts—separating migrant parents and children, deploying U.S. troops to the border, sending asylum-seekers to Mexico to await immigration court hearings—have not reduced the number of people fleeing poverty and violence in Central America to enter the U.S. without authorization.

Guardado knows all too well the pain and fear that families suffer when making the dangerous decision to migrate to the U.S. He was just 9 years old in 1991 when he and his mother made the nearly 3,000-mile trek from their mountain town in El Salvador.

Today, he is an assistant professor of theology at Fordham. And while the federal government remains deeply divided on how to handle the crisis, he views it not as a political abstraction but as a theological issue.

A Migrant’s Journey

Guardado was born in a rural town in northern El Salvador during the country’s civil war. As he approached his 10th birthday, his mother feared that he would soon be conscripted by the army or the guerrillas.

She was determined to move him from harm’s way. Family in the U.S. loaned them money, and Guardado said his grandfather probably sold what little cattle the family had to help pay for his and his mother’s journey. He remembers crying with his grandfather as they said their goodbyes, both of them knowing they might never see each other again. And they never did.

“We got on a bus, and I counted palm trees,” Guardado said. He learned two English phrases from his mother—“‘Thank you,’ ‘I’m sorry’—how to be grateful and how to ask for forgiveness,” he said. “These were the only two phrases that I had in my English vocabulary leaving El Salvador.”

He thinks he counted palm trees as a way of remembering his country. By the time he reached the hundreds, he fell asleep. He awoke in Guatemala, and from there his memory skips through a series of glimpses, mostly involving walking: “A lot. Many days. Under the moonlight.” He traveled with a group of about 15 migrants who followed a “coyote,” a paid guide, for the length of the journey.

He remembers being crammed into false compartments of trailers, packed together “like sardines” for five hours at a time. In Tijuana, they crossed beneath a barbed-wired fence patrolled by jeeps, and in darkness jammed into a small taxi like a “clown car,” which took them over back roads to a white van that ultimately brought them to San Diego.

He and his mother eventually connected with family in Los Angeles, where Guardado was educated by the De La Salle Christian Brothers at Cathedral High School. He earned a full scholarship to attend Saint Mary’s College of California, and it was in his first year there that he finally received legal residency status. He became a U.S. citizen in 2010.

Religion, Politics, and Sanctuary

Saint Mary’s is not far from a Trappist monastery, where Guardado spent a year before earning a master’s degree in theology at the University of Notre Dame. For two years, he directed the social justice ministry at a Catholic church in Tucson, Arizona. Then he returned to the monastery for what he thought would be the rest of his life. But there, in isolation, ideas began to “percolate,” he said, and he returned to Notre Dame, where he earned a doctorate in theology.

He initially studied early church history, but his focus changed after he took a course with Gustavo Gutiérrez, O.P., the father of liberation theology, which emphasizes the perspective of the poor.

“I began to crack open the possibility that my own experience, my community’s experience, and the historical reality of Latin America—poverty, oppression, war, violence—that all of this was raw material out of which I could do theological reflection,” Guardado said.

In his dissertation, he wrote about the 1980s sanctuary movement, when hundreds of Catholic churches provided a safe haven for refugees from Central America. Today, he said, only a handful of churches in the U.S. are willing to take that risk. He said bishops will often say providing sanctuary is illegal or too political.

“The term sanctuary often mistakenly gets reduced to politics,” he said. “In light of human displacement worldwide and 11 million undocumented here in the U.S., if we’re to be a church of and for the poor, then you can’t just say ‘no.’ You have to engage with the question theologically. Otherwise, one can argue that it’s an ecclesial sin of omission.”

Guardado said the point of theology is not just to “do religious metaphysics” but to deal with contemporary issues head-on. He is developing a course on migration and theology that will include a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border.

“I want my students to ask: How does theological thinking change the world? How does it change history? How does it leave an impact so that it’s not just thinking about God but actually aims to transform the world?”

Bearing Witness at the Border

Guardado is far from being the only Fordham professor engaging with the humanitarian crisis at the border.

During spring break in March, a group of 10 faculty members went to see it for themselves. They visited the Kino Border Initiative, a consortium of six Catholic organizations in the border city of Nogales—both on the Arizona side and the Sonora, Mexico, side—that serves deportees and asylum-seekers and promotes a spirit of international solidarity.

Faculty members raised $13,000 to buy toiletries and necessities for the migrants, and Fordham’s Office of Mission Integration and Planning funded the trip. Michael C. McCarthy, S.J., vice president for mission integration and planning, said it was a necessity, given how migration is now a major global challenge.

“Because this is such a major social issue and it impacts questions of justice, what we want to be as a society, and how a place like Fordham, as a Jesuit university, tries to develop students, we decided the border would be a great site for this immersion experience for a diverse group of faculty members,” he said.

Jacqueline Reich, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Communications and Media Studies, and theology professor James McCartin, Ph.D., acting associate provost of the University, co-led the trip.

It was the second time Reich went to Nogales, having worked with the Kino Initiative in January 2018. Although only 14 months had passed, the experience was very different, she said. As before, the group stayed overnight in Arizona and crossed the border to work in a comedor, or cafeteria, in Mexico, that provided meals to people waiting for asylum claims to be heard in the United States.

In 2018, she said, they would typically have one seating of 40 to 50 people—mostly men, a few women, and very few unaccompanied minors. This time, there were multiple seatings with 300 people per meal.

“We spent a lot of time holding babies while people could eat, or entertaining children, or sitting and talking to groups of families that had left Honduras, Guatemala, or regions of Mexico that were affected by gang violence and poverty,” she said.

In addition to serving meals, the group hosted a party at a women’s shelter, met with Border Patrol agents, and hiked along the border to understand the conditions there.

They also attended an “Operation Streamline” hearing in Tucson, Arizona, where immigrants appeared in a group before a judge, who often deported them for being in the U.S. illegally after asking two quick questions.

Glenn Hendler, Ph.D., a professor of English and American studies and acting chair of the English department, said he was surprised to learn that a wall was constructed through the middle of the city of Nogales in 1994, long before President Donald Trump made building a border wall his signature campaign promise.

Although he does not speak Spanish, he was able to connect with a 6-year-old girl at the comedor whose father was washing dishes nearby.

“It was an incredible joy to make a child who was going through a horrific experience laugh,” he said. “The next day, we were serving a meal, and I heard a little girl yelling ‘hola, hola,’ and it was the same little girl again. She was happy to see me, and I was happy to see her. But there were so many people there that they just got rushed out, so I never got to say goodbye to this little girl. For some reason, that just broke my heart.”

Speaking with the Border Patrol complicated the picture for Hendler because it showed how difficult the job is, he said. But it did not change his mind about the moral implications of the situation. In fact, he said that by then he felt more emotionally connected to what had previously been an abstract concept.

‘Accompany, Humanize, Complicate’

Carey Kasten, Ph.D., associate professor of Spanish, was moved by learning specific details of the migrants’ experience, like why black water bottles are a must for those crossing the border at night. (They don’t reflect moonlight.) “We were told to accompany, humanize, and complicate,” she said. “To see those real items that our guide had collected on hikes through the desert, and also to see people get out of a van who’d been deported and go into the soup kitchen we were working in [in Mexico], was something that really stood out.”

McCartin, the theology professor who co-led the trip, recalled a conversation with a man from Honduras who asked if all Americans consider him and his fellow migrants to be criminals. “I said, ‘Oh gosh, no, I have no problem with you.’ This guy was like, ‘Really? I can’t believe that.’ I said, ‘No, I can see how you have a sense that that’s how Americans talk about you, and there are plenty of them that do, but there are also a lot of us that don’t really begrudge you trying to have a better life,’” he said.

“This moment of his being surprised that we’re not unified in our attitudes toward people at the border—a lightbulb went on for this guy, and I’ll remember that.”

—Story co-author: Patrick Verel

On April 8, colleagues, friends, and associates who knew him best closed out the University’s yearlong celebration of the cardinal with an evening of discussion, prayer, and fellowship.

“The Apologetics of Personal Testimony: A Celebration of the Life and Faith of Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J.,” featured a panel discussion, a Mass and a dinner reception on the Rose Hill campus, Cardinal Dulles’ home for 20 years.

The day began at Tognino Hall, where Michael C. McCarthy, S.J., vice president for Mission Integration and Planning at Fordham, moderated a panel discussion featuring Michael Canaris, Ph.D., GSAS ’13, assistant professor at the Institute of Pastoral Studies at Loyola University Chicago, Anne-Marie Kirmse, O.P., former research associate for the McGinley Chair in Religion and Society at Fordham, and the Most Reverend James Massa, auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Brooklyn.

Sister Kirmse focused on Cardinal Dulles’ journey of faith, from his early years in a deeply religious Presbyterian household to his casting off belief in God in high school and first two college years, to his conversion experience and his search for a church in which to practice his faith.

Cardinal Dulles was educated at Choate Rosemary Hall and Harvard University, and his family included a father who became secretary of state (Washington Dulles International Airport is named for him) and an uncle who became head of the CIA. He converted to Catholicism and went on to become the first American who was not a bishop to be named a cardinal. That same faith, she said, sustained him in the time of declining health in the years before his death.

Canaris as well picked up on that suffering—which he saw first-hand as Cardinal Dulles’ last doctoral student—speaking about “the crucible of torture in his last months.” In the end, Canaris, who is editing a volume based on papers on Cardinal Dulles delivered during events at Fordham this past year,  said Cardinal Dulles was like the tested man in the Letter of James.

“Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial; for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him,” he said.

Bishop Massa recounted Cardinal Dulles’ long engagement with ecumenical dialogue, as well as the cardinal’s growing disappointment with how that dialogue was conducted, and where it was headed. While he stressed that Cardinal Dulles never reversed himself on the subject and “personally stood by all the ecumenical statements he had ever signed,” he said Cardinal Dulles believed “the ground had shifted” since early years after the Second Vatican Council and said a new term for this new landscape was needed.

“Avery gave it a name: ‘Mutual enrichment by mean of personal testimony.’ That focus on the witness of one’s Christian life became a motif of Cardinal Dulles’ later years, and was powerfully testified to by his final illness,” he said.

A Mass of remembrance concelebrated by the Jesuit community of Fordham followed at the University Church. Bishop Massa served as principal celebrant, and Patrick J Ryan, S.J., the Lawrence J. McGinley Professor of Religion and Society, delivered the homily.

At a dinner reception at Bepler Commons, Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, recalled Cardinal Dulles’ humble nature, noting that after he was elevated to Cardinal in 2001, he pointedly declined the honorific “Your Eminence” in favor of the traditional “Father.”

Cardinal Dulles was also close friends with Edward Cardinal Egan, Archbishop of New York, he said, and when his health started to fail him in his later years, Egan visited him often and offered him a final resting place at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

“Dulles flatly told him ‘no.’ After some back and forth, he explained his reason: he wanted to be buried next to his Jesuit brothers,” Father McShane said.

“Avery Dulles was buried next to man a who taught high school math—a good guy.”

The evening was sponsored by the Spellman Hall Jesuit Community, the Office of the President, the Office of the Provost, the Office of Mission Integration and Planning, and the Center on Religion and Culture.

—Additional reporting by David Gibson and David Goodwin

This spring, a group of 10 Fordham faculty members traveled there to see it for themselves. From March 17 to 22, they visited the Kino Border Initiative, a consortium of six Catholic organizations in the border city of Nogales—both on the Arizona side and the Sonora, Mexico side. Kino aims to promote border and immigration policies that affirm the dignity of the human person and a spirit of binational solidarity.

The trip was funded by Fordham’s Office of Mission Integration and Planning and featured faculty from arts and sciences, the Graduate School of Social Service, the Graduate School of Education, the Gabelli School of Business, and the Law School. The group raised $13,000 to purchase toiletries and necessities for the migrants and documented their time on a blog.

Big Changes in Just One Year

Jacqueline Reich, Ph.D., professor of communications and chair of the Department of Communications and Media Studies, co-led the trip along with Associate Professor of Theology and Acting Associate Provost James McCartin, Ph.D. It was Reich’s second time in Nogales, having worked with Kino in January 2018. Although only 14 months had passed since her last visit, the experience was very different, she said. As before, the group stayed overnight in Arizona and crossed the border to work in a comedor, or cafeteria, in Mexico, that provided meals to people waiting for asylum claims to be heard in the United States.

In 2018, she said, they would typically have one seating of 40 to 50 people—mostly men, a few women, and very few unaccompanied minors. This time, there were multiple seatings with 300 people per meal.

“We spent a lot of time holding babies while people could eat, or entertaining children, or sitting and talking to groups of families that had left Honduras, Guatemala, or regions of Mexico that were affected by gang violence and poverty,” she said.

In addition to serving meals, the group hosted a party at a women’s shelter, met with border patrol agents, and hiked along the border to understand the conditions there. They also attended an “Operation Streamline” hearing in Tuscon, Arizona, where immigrants appear in a group before a judge, who often deported them for being here illegally after two quick questions.

Glenn Hendler, Ph.D., a professor of English and American studies and acting chair of the English department, said he knew a little about the crisis at the border before heading there, but learned a lot from the trip. He was surprised to learn, for instance, that a wall was constructed through the middle of the Nogales in 1994, long before President Donald Trump made building a border wall his signature campaign promise.

‘Never Got to Say Goodbye’

Although he does not speak Spanish, he was able to connect with a 6-year old girl at the comedor whose father was washing dishes nearby.

“It was an incredible joy to make a child who was going through a horrific experience laugh,” he said.

“The next day, we were serving a meal, and I heard a little girl yelling ‘hola, hola,’ and it was the same little girl again. She was happy to see me, and I was happy to see her. But there were so many people there, that they just got rushed out. So, I never got to say goodbye to this little girl. For some reason, that just broke my heart.”

Speaking with the border patrol complicated the picture for Hendler because it showed how difficult the job is, but it did not change his mind about the moral implications of the situation. In fact, he said he now felt more emotionally connected to what had previously been an abstract concept. He also said that the bonding experience he had with the other nine faculty was “very powerful.”

Accompany, Humanize, Complicate

Carey Kasten, Ph.D., associate professor of Spanish, echoed this, saying she was moved by the possibility of future projects at Fordham. Her scholarship touches on issues related to the border, so she was familiar with the situation. But she was moved to learn things like why black water bottles are a must for those crossing the border at night. (They don’t reflect moonlight).

“We were told to accompany, humanize, and complicate. To see those real items that our guide had collected on hikes through the desert, and also to see people get out of a van who’d been deported and go into the soup kitchen we were working in, was something that really stood out,” she said.

She was also shocked at the level of needless suffering taking place. When people are deported to Mexico for instance, they are given back any cash they had on them when they were apprehended in the form of a check. But the checks are only cashable in the United States, so once a week, a nonprofit group called No More Deaths visits the comedor to help people cash them. She also wasn’t impressed with the judge who spoke to them after presiding over the deportation proceedings.

“He said, ‘I’m just carrying out my marching orders.’ And I thought, ‘You’re a lawyer. You could leave and get a different job.’”

She felt more empathy toward border patrol agents. “They have fewer choices, and their job sounds really hard,” she said. “I found it really complicated to parse it all.”

McCartin said the goal of the trip was to give faculty members an experience different from their everyday work life that would also then affect their work life. The group will reunite soon for debriefing and discussion of possible future plans.

One conversation that will always stay with him happened when a man from Honduras asked him if Americans all thought they were criminals.

“I said ‘Oh gosh, no, I have no problem with you.’ This guy was like, ‘Really? I can’t believe that.’ I said ‘No, I can see how you have a sense that that’s how Americans talk about you, and there are plenty of them that do, but there are also a lot of us that don’t really begrudge you trying to have a better life,’” he said.

“This moment of his being surprised that we’re not unified in our attitudes toward people at the border—a lightbulb went on for this guy, and I’ll remember that.”

Carrying Their Stories Back Home

Michael C. McCarthy, S.J., vice president and presidential assistant for planning in the Office of Mission Integration and Planning, said the trip was a necessity, given how immigration is now a major global challenge.

“Because this is such a major social issue and it impacts questions of justice, what we want to be as a society, and how a place like Fordham, as a Jesuit university, tries to develop students, we decided the border would be a great site for this immersion experience for a diverse group of faculty members,” he said.

Reich is making sure the issue lives on, having structured the syllabus of one of her spring classes, Films of Moral Struggle, to include representations of borders and migration. The class is also sending Easter cards to people in detention at the border to bring a little color and humanity into their lives, she said.

Above all, she said she’ll hold onto memories of conversations with the migrants she met, like one with a man at the comedor who was sporting a University of Michigan hat. He’d lived in the U.S. for 22 years before being deported after being stopped for a traffic violation.

“I will always carry their stories with me,” Reich said.

Photos courtesy of Fordham faculty.

David Gibson, an award-winning journalist and co-author of Finding Jesus: Faith. Fact. Forgery (St. Martin’s Press, 2015), has been named the new director of Fordham University’s Center on Religion and Culture (CRC). Gibson will start on July 1, and succeeds James P. McCartin, Ph.D., a historian of American Catholicism who will return to full-time teaching after leading the center for six years.

Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, praised Gibson’s appointment,  “We would be hard-pressed to find someone more uniquely suited than David Gibson as CRC’s next director,” he said.

“He brings to the post a wealth of experience writing about the modern church and the complexities of contemporary religious life in the United States and abroad, experience which will inform our discussions about our past and future.”

Gibson is well-versed in issues of faith, having begun his career in journalism in Rome at Vatican Radio, which, like Fordham, is connected to the Society of Jesus.. During his time there, Gibson covered many of Pope John Paul II’s travels, and the election of Pope Benedict XVI. He detailed the latter in The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperCollins, 2007).

Upon returning to the United States in 1990, Gibson wrote for media such as The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. He also wrote for Catholic publications, including America magazine and Commonweal, and has been honored several times as the nation’s top religion reporter.

Gibson has co-written and co-produced several documentaries for CNN and the History Channel including Finding Jesus: Faith. Fact. Forgery, a CNN series based on his book. He is also a frequent television and radio commentator on religion news.

Originally from Plainfield, New Jersey, Gibson graduated from Furman University with a degree in European history. He now resides in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter.

Founded in 2004 by Peter and Margaret Steinfels, the CRC confronts the questions arising at the intersection of religious traditions and contemporary culture. Drawing on New York’s leading role in intellectual and literary life, the visual and performing arts, politics, media, diplomacy, and humanitarian activities, CRC programs aim to promote intellectual enrichment and affirm Fordham’s leadership role as a shaping force in the public discourse.

“The center is a crucial part of Fordham’s engagement with the intellectual, religious, and spiritual life of New York and beyond, and we look forward to David’s enthusiasm and insights in carrying that mission forward through thought-provoking conversations,” said Michael C. McCarthy, S.J., vice president for mission integration and planning.

—Veronika Kero

When members of the Society of Jesus gathered in Rome to chose a new leader last month at its 36th General Congregation, it did not take long to arrive at a consensus on October 14: Father Arturo Sosa Abascal, S.J., of the Venezuelan Province.

With his choice, the order, whose members have led Fordham since 1846, followed in the steps of the Catholic Church by selecting their first leader from Latin America.

Michael C. McCarthy, S.J., Vice President for Mission Integration and Planning, said this was unsurprising, given the fact that the region is one of the most populous areas of the world for Catholicism.

“My guess is that it’s not just a coincidence that you have a Latin American general at the same time you have a Latin American pope. We can read into that a desire to provide support for the Pope’s vision of what the church should be,” he said.

Father Arturo, a native of Caracas, Venezuela, was previously a delegate of the General for the Interprovincial Houses and Works of the Society of Jesus in Rome. A doctor in political sciences from the Universidad Central de Venezuela, he has a license in philosophy from the Andrés Bello Catholic University, peaks Spanish, Italian, and English and understands French.

Father McCarthy said the new Father General, who succeeds Adolfo Nicolas, S.J., has indicated that he would really like to collaborate with others on a global scale, but otherwise he has not indicated additional priorities. This is prudent, Father McCarthy said, and he said he hopes the new general will approach the position with care, patience, and understanding.

If asked for his advice, Father McCarthy said he would ask Father Arturo to help Jesuits in the United States set apostolic priorities. “In light of increasing demands for fewer Jesuits, we don’t have any clear sense of priority as to what we should be most invested and committed to in the longer term,” he said.

“Generals have been very good at being inspirational, and giving a philosophical, moral vision. I think we may also need more organizational vision.”

“As an academic institution we’re all about educating students who will be lights for the world,” said Michael McCarthy, SJ, vice president for Mission Integration and Planning. “We dedicate this building to education, to the progress of the sciences and of the arts, and to all forms of learning… I think that’s the most important way we can honor Joseph Martino.”

An industry leader and longtime supporter of Fordham, the late Martino was the president and chairman of the National Lead Company and vice chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Guided by his firm belief that industry should support higher education, Martino was integral to securing the land for Fordham’s Manhattan campus in 1955 and led the campaign to raise funds to develop the site.

He was awarded an honorary doctorate of laws in 1956, and in 1963, the University presented him with its prestigious Insignis Medal for extraordinary distinction in the service of God and humanity.

Martino Hall houses faculty and administrators from 18 University departments, offices, and centers that were previously scattered among various buildings around Columbus Circle. The nine-story building on Columbus Avenue is located across the street from the campus that Martino helped grow.

“We had community members in three different locations on nine different floors,” said Brian Byrne, vice president for Lincoln Center. “We wanted to bring everyone closer to home.”

The building bearing Martino’s name comes with a storied past. Built in 1929, the structure was home to one of the first automatic parking garages in New York City. The Kent Automatic Garage used an electrical “parking machine,” which hooked cars by the rear axle and towed them from the elevator platform to a parking spot.

The structure remained a garage until 1943, when it was sold and converted to the Sofia Brothers Warehouse. It served as headquarters to the College Board before becoming part of the Lincoln Center campus.

The exterior’s unique Art Deco style—designed by the architectural firm Jardine, Hill & Murdock—was meant to evoke the garage’s innovation and modernity. In 1982, the Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the building as a landmark, calling it a “notable example of the Art Deco style in New York City.”

“It’s a great space, and it has allowed us to be a little unconventional with our workspace,” said Jacqueline Reich, PhD, chair of the communication and media studies department, which occupies the seventh floor of Martino Hall.

“Students and faculty can have meetings or work on projects together… it [allows us]to have an open, collaborative environment to foster innovation.”

In addition to serving as executive director of Santa Clara University’s Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education, Father McCarthy is Edmund Campion Professor in the religious studies and classics departments and assistant to the university president for mission and identity. He has brought Santa Clara’s Ignatian Center to a new visibility in Silicon Valley and beyond by stressing the integration of faith, justice and the intellectual life, and served as the university’s public voice on the importance of Jesuit, Catholic higher education in the United States. His work on this topic has appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education and the New York Times.

“We are delighted to be bringing Father McCarthy to Fordham,” said Joseph M. McShane, SJ, president of the University. “He is not only a respected scholar, but a superb ambassador for Jesuit values and a gifted teacher. As Fordham approaches its 175th anniversary, we hope to find ways for the Jesuit tradition to support not only the student experience but also the academic mission of the University. Hence we are changing the title of this particular position to vice president for Mission Integration and Planning.”

Father McCarthy entered the Society of Jesus during his undergraduate years at Stanford University. After switching to Santa Clara University, he earned his bachelor’s degree in classical languages and literature magna cum laude and went on to earn the M.A. (Oxon.) in Litterae Humaniores at Oxford University, taking First Class Honors. He taught high school in Sacramento, California, for three years before earning his master’s in divinity with distinction from the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley. In 2003, Father McCarthy completed his doctorate in theology at the University of Notre Dame—attending as a Presidential Fellow—and joined the faculty at Santa Clara.

Since then he has taught everything from freshman surveys of Christian traditions to advanced seminars on the texts of Homer, Euripides, Horace, and Augustine, and his research into ancient theological traditions has appeared in Harvard Theological Review and other distinguished journals. He has been a visiting professor at Loyola University Chicago and board member at Seattle University, Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, St. Ignatius College Preparatory in San Francisco, and Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose.

Since becoming executive director of Santa Clara’s Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education in 2011, Father McCarthy has led its five-year plan to elevate Ignatian values and ideas at Santa Clara University and apply them in the wider community. Under his leadership, the center awarded faculty research grants and sponsored institutes, seminars, and forums on the Jesuit educational tradition for faculty members; it also expanded its community-based learning and immersion programs for students. The center has led Santa Clara’s Thriving Neighbors Initiative, an educational and social service partnership with a neighborhood of recent Latino immigrants in downtown San Jose.

Monsignor Quinn served with distinction in a number of parishes in the Diocese of Scranton before accepting the position of vice president for University mission and ministry in 2009. He initially agreed to a five-year stint but extended it to six years so he could coordinate Fordham’s response to Pope Francis’s U.S. visit. He has been appointed pastor of Our Lady of the Snows Parish, effective Oct. 2.

“A saintly priest. A wise man. A good friend,” Father McShane said of Monsignor Quinn. “We will miss him more than he will ever know, and Scranton is lucky to get him back: he is the most talented and most loved priest in the diocese.”