His arrival at Fordham in 2016 came with a host of changes, most of which were focused on Fordham’s current and future identity. Most notably, changes began with the name of his division, which was renamed from Mission and Ministry to Mission Integration and Planning.

“The term mission and ministry can suggest that for people to be engaged in the mission and identity of Fordham, they must be part of a small subset of people in campus ministry—and I just don’t believe that’s true,” said Father McCarthy, who has worked or studied at Stanford, Santa Clara, Oxford, the Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley, and Notre Dame. “I believe that everybody owns the mission, that everybody is responsible for advancing the mission, and what we really need from somebody in my position is the ability to connect with larger groups of people rather than just ‘the choir,’” he said.

“Let’s be honest, we are planning, in some respects, for a time in which there are going to be fewer Jesuits here. So to be able to share that mission through well-structured programs with colleagues is very important.”

And while Campus Ministry—and ‘the choir’—remain central to the heart and soul of the division, he said, the larger effort is to help everyone, from faculty to staff to students, to understand what it means to be part of a Jesuit university and to create space for them to contribute, in ways that connect to their own core beliefs and commitments.

Being of and for New York

With its motto “New York is my campus, Fordham is my school,” the University affirms its commitment to the city, said Father McCarthy, and as a Jesuit institution, we should be particularly committed to the city’s marginalized and underserved.

“I believe that programmatically and organizationally, Fordham can do an even better job at helping faculty and students engage with our neighbors,” he said. “Both Dorothy Day and Global Outreach were doing excellent jobs programmatically—but they were limited to specific roles. I felt if we incorporated a larger view that connected more with faculty members, then they could include community engaged learning as part of their courses.”

In the fall of last year, Father McCarthy’s office launched the Center for Community Engaged Learning, building on the local legacy of the Dorothy Day Center for Service and Justice. The work of the former Dorothy Day Center now falls under the new center’s umbrella, as does the cultural outreach and service learning program, and Urban Plunge, the pre-orientation program that introduces first-year students to the city through service. All of the programs address who Fordham is, he said, and the new structure helps them facilitate what Fordham can become.

He spoke of a recent visit to the U.S. Mexican border with faculty members that spurred conversations of how academic research—regardless of the field—can help contribute to the University’s stated concern for immigrants in the United States and globally.

In Tune with Strategic Planning

Father McCarthy said his department will work in tandem with Fordham’s strategic planning processes, particularly where issues of social justice are concerned.

“I don’t think any of us has an exact script for what we’ll be doing, but through CUSP (Continuous University Strategic Planning), we can keep ethical dimensions of education on our horizon,” he said. “It is an important part of what it means to be Fordham University,” he said.

And while Mission Integration and Planning is geared toward the undergraduate experience, engaging faculty overlaps with the graduate-level experience as well.

“It’s true that I have tended to focus on undergraduate education, both in my own background and because that’s what I know best, but I’ve found my colleagues in the professional schools to be tremendous advocates of justice, concern for the environment, and for the marginalized,” he said. “They’re all pretty deeply invested in developing professionals who are going to be ethical citizens of the world. I have a lot of faith in our deans as well as in the faculties of our professional schools, they really do want to foster a more just, sustainable society.”

Regardless of the school, Father McCarthy said an important part of his role is to help faculty, particularly those who have had no experience at a Jesuit university or a faith-based institution, to integrate mission into their work. That is where the CUSP process can be enormously effective, he said. It can help set up development programs, both for faculty and staff and trustees, so that they can deepen their understanding of the Jesuit mission.

“I think it’s important to be a diligent member of this larger CUSP process; I’m not currently on the CUSP committee, but I’m constantly brought back into it,” he said. “At a practical level, that means I’m willing to contribute to those efforts, whatever they may be at any particular moment. What we’re doing is increasing coordination and planning.”

Supporting Faculty

Planning includes faculty seminars, retreats, and immersion experiences—such as the one to the border, where ways of thinking about the mission of the University become less abstract and more grounded in an experience of academic community. Through the provost’s office, Father McCarthy set up a dean’s Ignatian forum, where academic deans of the University come together four times a year to talk about how they can contribute to the larger Jesuit mission.

He said his division can provide plenty of platforms from which professors can integrate with the community, from Global Outreach to volunteering at POTS, a local community service organization near the Rose Hill campus. He added that another future goal would be to provide training on how to build a community-engaged learning curriculum.

“Faculty members need pretty significant support to understand how to do this and then in the implementation, they need support connecting with real members of the community,” he said. “My hope is that the Center for Community Engaged Learning can promote this in a very dynamic way alongside very dynamic pedagogy, to truly make New York ‘my campus.’”

But, he added, the focus is not limited to New York. He said that through Global Outreach, professors can potentially incorporate curriculum. A GO! trip to Ecuador could be part of a Spanish class or an economics class.

“Our hope would be that we think more expansively so that faculty members can use us as a resource to connect their students to local and global realities,” said Father McCarthy. “We’re just beginning, but there are more possibilities for connection, for integration, than we had ever allowed ourselves to imagine.”

“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.

Fordham University Libraries has received a 1599 publication of Father Ribadeneira’s response to The Prince, titled, Trattato della Religione. The book was gifted to Fordham’s Special Collections by Italian businessman Gianluigi Longhi.

“Today, people talk about virtues in business—and they are all here in this Jesuit’s book,” said Longhi. “Entrepreneurs, bankers, and managers today must be able to show Christian virtues, so that people can follow leaders who behave correctly.”

Longhi said he decided to donate the book after meeting Henry Schwalbenberg, Ph.D., director of the graduate program in International Political Economy and Development, and Michael C. McCarthy, S.J., vice president for Mission Integration and Planning. The three attended conferences at the Vatican and at Fordham which focused on ethics in business, government, and economics.

“It’s an excellent text, a witness to a long tradition of anti-Machiavellian thinking,” said Alessandro Polcri, Ph.D., associate professor of Italian who specializes in 14th- and 15th-century Italian literature. “Machiavelli was criticized as a person who didn’t defend Christian virtues and promoted an approach to life with no moral limits.”

Polcri described Father Ribadeneira as a multilingual intellectual best known for his biography of St. Ignatius, Life of Loyola. He said that Father Ribadeneira’s criticism of Machiavelli in his native Spanish was published in 1595. The 1599 copy given to Fordham is a first edition translated “in beautiful Italian”—of which there are only 35 known copies in existence.

“De Ribadeniera’s book is a strong statement about how to use religion and the veneration of God in the act of governing and politics,” said Polcri.

In addition to igniting interest in critical texts surrounding The Prince, the gift could also reignite interest in “a figure who is a fundamental Jesuit,” said Polcri.

“Few at Fordham knew of Father Ribadeneira outside of his Loyola biography,” he said. “Now there’s more to explore.”

Polcri said that original sources in a digital age have become increasingly important as teaching tools. “In the digital era, students study the past as if it’s something abstract. Manuscript and printed material from that period is fascinating for students even if it is not easily readable. It has its own characteristics.

“But print is a great opportunity for them to understand the changes over the centuries. They can see the materiality and realize the transmission of the texts in that time,” he said. “When I teach Machiavelli, I will take them to the library to see this.”

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.”

Among his many accomplishments, Scribner was a musician first. A world-class bassoonist, he performed as a principal with the American Symphony Orchestra, Long Island Philharmonic, and the Brooklyn Philharmonic, to name a few. He also played with the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.

Scribner also developed a passion for sharing the music with a borough that lacked a professional classical music ensemble. Starting in 1972, the Bronx-based ensemble obtained union status (Local 802, AFM) and brought world-class musicians to the Bronx.

“He dedicated his life to the ensemble,” said David Nussenbaum, executive director of the arts group.

As the borough’s reputation took a beating throughout the 1970s, Scribner’s leadership grew the ensemble by forging partnerships with other Bronx institutions, including a particularly strong association with Fordham. The group has held artist-in-residence status at the University since 1979.

For more than three decades the ensemble has been a ubiquitous presence, performing a fall music series, accompanying the University Choir at the Festival of Lessons and Carols holiday concerts, playing a spring concert, and breathing life into the quiet campus through a series of summer concerts.

In the 1980s, when the New York City Board of Education started cutting back on music programs in the borough, Nussenbaum said Scribner steered the ensemble toward filling the void.

“He saw an opportunity,” said Nussenbaum. “If the city couldn’t step in, then we would arrange to bring the music to the classrooms. This has blossomed into a big part of what we do.”

At Fordham, students taking introductory music courses are exposed to their topic through ensemble performances.

“They get to hear live music four times a year as part of their curriculum,” said Nussenbaum. “Not many schools can say that.”

The group continues to forge new partnerships across the borough, while maintaining established ties. In the coming months there will be performances at the Bartow-Pell Mansion, the Fieldston School, and, of course, at Fordham’s annual Lessons and Carols, to be held on Dec. 3 at St. Paul’s Church on 60^th and Columbus Ave. and on Dec. 4 at the University Church.

“He was a wonderful musician, and his greatest legacy will be these programs,” said Nussenbaum.

The Los Angeles Times has called Houlihan “the next big organ talent.”

The program will mostly feature music from the French romantic era.

“I love this period and the way these composers use the organ to its fullest extent,” said Houlihan. “It’s really red-blooded, full-throttle organ music: from moments that terrify to moments that feature the most gentle sounds that the organ has.”

Houlihan said he was looking forward to playing on a newly built Schoenstein & Co. instrument, which was installed just three years ago.

“Each organ is made for the room and no two are the same,” he said. “It’s a great asset to the University and to the city. I feel really lucky.”

He said that he is particularly looking forward to closing the concert with

Maurice Duruflé’s Suite, opus 5.

“It begins with a mysterious prelude and beautiful solo of the clarinet, [and]ends as one of the most terrifying pieces for the organ. It’s nonstop excitement!”

The performance is free and is in memoriam for Rev. James Boyce, O.Carm., former member of the music faculty. 

Program:
 
Louis Vierne – Carillon de Westminster

César Franck – Choral No. 2 in B minor

Joseph Bonnet – Variations de Concert, op.1

Olivier Messiaen – from L’Ascension
II. Alleluias sereins
III. Transports de joie

Maurice Duruflé – Suite, opus 5
I. Prélude
II. Siciliènne
III. Toccata

“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.”