Synodality Series Session 5 | Pope Francis' Vision of a Synodal Church: CELAM and Ignatian Tradition
Maria Clara BingemerPontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro
Austen IvereighCampion Hall, Oxford University
Peter J. CasarellaDuke Divinity School
Free and open to the public. This online symposium series is being organized by the American Cusanus Society, Nova Forum and the Lumen Christi Institute. Additional Cosponsors include Commonweal, Harvard Catholic Forum, America Media, the St. Anselm Institute for Catholic Thought and the Collegium Institute.
About the Series | In light of Pope Francis’ call for global Catholic communities to enter into a two-year process on synodality, this six-part series will examine both the history of synods and the current dialogue around the future of synodality in the Church. This series is an opportunity to learn more about the topic in advance of the October 2023 Rome summit, “For a Synodal Church.” Pope Francis is inviting the entire Church to reflect on “this path of synodality which God expects of the Church of the third millennium,” an important part of the Church’s own process to achieving participation and living out mission.
For more information about the entire series, including other upcoming sessions, visit our series webpage.
About Session 5 | A dialogue exploring the roots of Pope Francis’s appeal to synodality, featuring Maria Clara Bingemer (Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro) and Austen Ivereigh (Campion Hall, Oxford University), moderated by Peter Casarella (Duke Divinity School).
Maria Clara Lucchetti Bingemer is Associate Professor of Theology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, where she has served as both the vice dean and dean of the Center of Theology and Human Sciences. She has served in an advisory position with the Brazilian Catholic Bishops' Conference, looking secifically at the role of women and married laity in the Church and civil society. Bingemer serves on the boards of various theological journals and committees.
Austen Ivereigh is a Fellow in Contemporary Church History at Oxford University's Campion Hall. He is a writer, commentator and speaker on contemporary church affairs, with a specialist interest in the Church of Latin America and the papacy of Francis. He drew on his D.Phil. from St Antony’s College, Oxford, in 1993 — which was published as Catholicism and Politics in Argentina, 1810-1960 (MacMillan 1994) — for his biography of Pope Francis, The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope (Allen & Unwin, 2015), which has been translated into many languages.
He has recently published a follow-up, reviewing the pontificate, published in the US as Wounded Shepherd: Pope Francis and the Struggle to Convert the Catholic Church (Henry Holt, 2019).
His other interest is in church communications. A former deputy editor of The Tablet, and later public affairs director for Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Dr Ivereigh is also founder of the media project Catholic Voices, a movement of speakers that exists now in various countries. As a journalist and commentator, he has written widely on church affairs and on the Francis papacy more specifically for The Tablet, Commonweal, The New York Times, Crux, America magazine, Thinking Faith and many others. He appears often on BBC and other media.
Peter J. Casarella is Professor of Theology at Duke Divinity School. He received his PhD in Religious Studies at Yale University. Casarella previously served as professor of Systematic Theology at the University of Notre Dame and as director of the Latin American North American Church Concerns (LANACC) project in the Kellogg Institute for International Studies. Casarella has served as president of The American Cusanus Society, The Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians in the U.S. (ACHTUS), and the Academy of Catholic Theologians (ACT). He is currently serving a second five-year term on the International Roman Catholic-Baptist World Alliance Ecumenical Dialogue and served also on the Roman Catholic-World Communion of Reformed Churches Dialogue. He has authored or edited several books, including: Cuerpo de Cristo: The Hispanic Presence in the U.S. Catholic Church (1998), A World for All? Global Civil Society in Political Theory and Trinitarian Theology (2011), and most recently, Word as Bread: Language and Theology in Nicholas of Cusa (2017)
