Sanzone Center for Catholic Studies and Theological Reflection

Catholic churches across the country are closing doors and consolidating parishes. Many dioceses in rural areas have turned to priests from India. These priests are entering into predominantly white parishes where they can experience racism and unconscious biases from both parishioners and fellow priests. Additionally, Indian priests serve on Native reservations and enter into the long and disturbing history and present of Catholic settler colonialism. However, these priests have also engendered cross-racial and transnational friendships disrupting coastal elite assumptions of rural areas being inhospitable provincial “fly over” zones. Sonja Thomas, Ph.D., (Colby College) grew up as a Catholic and South Asian American in Eastern Montana and is writing an autoethnography on the subject. In this talk, she shared a portion of her forthcoming manuscript, Indians and Cowboys: Race, Caste, and Indian Missionary Priests in Rural America. Her research examines the intersections of caste, race, gender, class and religion in postcolonial India and the South Asian diaspora.

Pope Francis has brought new insights on the relations between the Catholic church and the world’s current social and political situation. His spiritual theology has a lot to say about the growing entrenchment that is taking place in our politics as well as in the church. Massimo Faggioli, Ph.D., addressed Pope Francis’ interpretation of the current global crisis and the need to use a theological, non-ideologicalmlens to understand his pontificate. Dr. Faggioli is a professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University and author of the forthcoming book The Liminal Papacy of Pope Francis: Moving Toward Global Catholicity

Steven Newcomb (Lenape, Shawnee) addressed the origins of federal Indian law and international law dating back to the early days of Western Christendom, most notably focused on what he calls the doctrine of Christian discovery and domination. An author and legal scholar, Newcomb is one of the foremost authorities on the Vatican papal decrees of the 15th century and their destructive impact on the original nations and peoples of the planet. He is the author of Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery and co-producer of the 2015 documentary The Doctrine of Discovery: Unmasking the Domination Code.

In attempting to create a more welcoming, attentive Church that speaks to human concerns of God’s mercy, history’s first Latin American and Jesuit pope has provoked passionate support but also bitter opposition. In his new book, British biographer Austen Ivereigh, Ph.D., digs deep behind the Francis pontificate to show how his patient reforms are rooted in a sophisticated understanding of the contemporary age — and how the Church needs to change to speak to humanity today.