Global Catholicism experts from around the world came to DePaul for the "Transformed by Hope" conference.

Center Director Peter Casarella

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Rev. Katongole's lecture

Professor Gemma Cruz

Global Catholicism the focus of center’s research and reflection

Through the creation of the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology, DePaul University has established itself as a leading center for research and reflection on the church’s demographic shift to Latin America, Southeast Asia and Africa, the so-called Global South.

“A primary goal of the center is to be at the forefront of the discussion about the relationship between the global Catholic Church and the forces of globalization,” says Peter Casarella, director of the center and a professor of Catholic Studies. “It’s an exciting time to have launched the center because by the year 2050, nearly 70 percent of the world’s Catholics will be from the Global South.”

The center got the discussion going in a big way in its inaugural year by convening an international conference on Catholic social theology that featured the pastoral leaders of Latin America, Canada and the United States, as well as the Rev. Gustavo Gutierrez, a University of Notre Dame theologian and founding father of liberation theology. The three-day conference in the fall was held at both DePaul and Chicago’s Catholic Theological Union.

In the winter, the center hosted a colloquium of 15 international scholars from such cities as New Delhi, India; Nairobi, Kenya; and Buenos Aires, Argentina, on the topic of how the Catholic Church can become a model of unity and diversity in an increasingly globalized culture. In the spring, it held its first public lecture delivered by the center’s inaugural senior research fellow, the Rev. Emmanuel Katongole, associate professor at the Duke University Divinity School and co-director of Duke’s Center for Reconciliation.

“DePaul’s approach is fresh and it is new. I don’t know of any other center that is having this kind of conversation about global Catholicism,” says Fr. Katongole, a Catholic priest from Uganda who spent four months in residence at DePaul. “For some people, Catholicism’s shift to the Global South is frightening; something to be denied. DePaul, on the other hand, is saying: ‘Wow! What a great moment for Catholicism. We want to be leading that conversation.”

Fr. Katongole described in his public lecture the research he did on his soon-to-be-published book, “The Sacrifice of Africa,” which focuses on how Christianity in Africa, Catholicism in particular, is contributing to the search for peace, development and a new future in Africa.

Casarella, a Catholic theologian who joined DePaul in 2008 from The Catholic University of America, where he was director of its Center for Medieval and Byzantine Studies, says the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology is a natural fit with DePaul.

“DePaul has a strong heritage of promoting religious and cultural diversity,” Casarella says. “It’s the perfect place for academic discussions on the challenges facing the Church amid its shift to the Global South. The Church needs Vincentian Catholicism and its focus on service to the poor.” For DePaul, the center helps to reinforce its Catholic and Vincentian identity, a primary goal of its VISION twenty12 strategic plan, he adds.

In April 2010, the center plans to convene an international gathering on campus titled “The Discourse of Catholicity: Unity and Diversity with the Lived Experience of Roman Catholicism.”

Gemma Cruz, a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Catholic Studies—which houses the center—is an expert on Asian Catholicism and global migration who has been an affiliate of the center and presented papers at its events. A native of the Philippines, Cruz says the center has an enormous opportunity to break new ground. “The Catholic Church has always presented itself as a global institution, but there has not been much scrutiny in that area.”

Casarella says the center plans to hire two additional scholars and will seek out research fellows from around the world to offer public lectures and serve in an advisory capacity. “We want the best people with expertise in global Catholicism from all over the world to identify the key issues and tell us where to go next,” he says. “That keeps us ahead of the curve in thinking about the church and its social message to the world.”