News

Under the direction of David McCallum, S.J., Le Moyne’s vice president for mission integration, a week-long program combining the best practices of contemporary leadership and management with the rich resources of Catholic spirituality is taking place this week at the Jesuit General Curia in Rome. Participants include a select group of key Vatican officials, major superiors of women’s and men’s religious orders and lay Catholic leaders.

“The Church is in the middle of a seismic change as it moves to a more synodal and discerning approach under the leadership of Pope Francis” said Father McCallum, missioned earlier this year by Superior General Artora Sosa, S.J. to direct the discerning leadership initiative. “Under the intense pressures that come with leading complex Church organizations, we’ve often defaulted to corporate approaches to decision making. Discernment was something you did on retreat, or when you hit a crisis and there was no other option. In reality, these approaches don’t have to be mutually exclusive. In this program we help seasoned leaders discover how they can integrate this deep tradition of discernment with some of the most effective contemporary practices of good management.”

The sessions included a keynote address from Father General Sosa (pictured above), and presentations by Cardinal Ravasi, who serves as president of the Pontifical Council on Culture, and Papal biographer and journalist Austen Ivereigh. The program resulted in significant media coverage, including Vatican News, L’Osservatore Romano, and this interview on EWTN.

In addition to Le Moyne, institutions taking part include the ESADE Business School in Barcelona, the McDonough Business School at Georgetown and the Social Sciences Department of the Gregorian University in Rome. The course was organized jointly by: the Jesuit General Curia; UISG (International Union of Superiors General of female religious orders); USG (International Association of Superiors General of male religious orders), and; IAJU (International Association of Jesuit Universities).