Jesuit Father Felix Raj, principal of St Xavier’s College in Kolkata, said they would like to extend more than 150 years of experience in higher education to Bangladeshi students, the report said.

The report added that the authorities are looking at either establishing a branch or a new college in Dhaka.

“I will meet the Bangladeshi prime minister next month to inform her of our willingness to start a St Xavier’s in Dhaka. If she agrees and promises to help us with necessary infrastructure, we will open a college there,” said Fr Raj.

He said if they can open a St Xavier’s college in Dhaka they have plans for curriculum, faculty and teacher exchanges between the Kolkata and Dhaka branches.

“The Jesuits’ Kolkata province is seeking to expand the services of our order in Bangladesh. We’ve already opened a training center and it will be really great to open a higher education center there,” Fr Raj continued.

[CathNews India]

I am writing to inform you that Father Ricardo J. Steinmetz, S.J., died January 27, 2012 at Juan Vergara Casas in Mexico City, Mexico. He was 86 years old and a Jesuit for 69 years. He was born in St. Louis on March 2, 1925, and entered the Society of Jesus at St. Stanislaus Seminary in Florissant, Missouri, on August 8, 1942. He taught mathematics as a scholastic at Regis High School in Denver, Colorado, and was ordained to the priesthood on June 16, 1955, at St. Mary’s College in Kansas.

Ricardo served at Immaculate Conception Parish and Muffles College in Orange Walk, Belize, from 1957 to 1966. He was then assigned to Mexico City where he served for the remainder of his life. For most of his time in Mexico, he heard confessions at a diocesan retreat house in Atotonilco, Guanajuato, where large groups gather for retreats. Ricardo would hear confessions for eight hours a day while the retreats were in session.

May this dedicated and holy man rest in peace.

These extraordinary individuals have made a significant impact on the students, families, and educators through Catholic schools and universities throughout America. Their innovative ideas and dedication to students and to the wider community, demonstrate the strong commitment to ensuring that every child has an opportunity for greatness.

“We are thrilled to recognize these extraordinary Champions in Catholic Education at the White House. Each of these nine leaders embody the values of education, innovation and service  through their stellar contributions to Catholic schools and the wider communities they serve,” said Alexia Kelley, Senior Policy Advisor White House Office of Faith-Based and  Neighborhood Partnerships. “These Champions, like their colleagues in Catholic education across the country, inspire all of us to build up our communities and our nation’s young people.”

The Champions of Change program was created as a part of President Obama’s Winning the Future initiative. Each week, a different sector is highlighted and groups of Champions, ranging from educators to entrepreneurs to community leaders, are recognized for the work they are doing to serve and strengthen their communities.

Produced by Loyola Productions Munich, and filmed over a period of seven days, In Spite of Darkness tells the story of five retreatants—among them, a Rabbi, an atheist, and a Catholic priest—and how they come face to face not only with their own vulnerabilities and complicity but with new strength, peace, and glimmers of hope. Viewers watch when descendants of victims meet descendants of perpetrators. Beliefs are undermined, old wounds torn open, but importantly, reconciliation begins. It is no longer they who come to Auschwitz, it is Auschwitz that comes to them. In silence they bear witness to what happened there.

The St. Ignatius of Loyola Foundation began a campaign Jan. 16 to raise money to buy corn, a staple in regional diets and a crop unable to be grown in an area that has received only 25 percent of its normal precipitation in 2011. The foundation estimated that 60,000 Tarahumara were impacted and 90 percent of the local bean crop had failed.

Mexico is experiencing drought in seven northern states, where the federal government says a lack of rain has caused the driest conditions in 71 years and negatively impacted 2.5 million residents.

The drought has hit the Tarahumara especially hard as the indigenous group inhabits an impoverished region of rugged natural beauty in the Sierra Madre that has attracted tourists and adventure seekers, but remains underdeveloped, impoverished and exploited by illegal logging and drug runners in recent decades.

Mexicans responded with generosity and outrage after an erroneous story was broadcast saying the Tarahumara were committing suicide after being unable to find food.

Jesuit Father Javier Avila said the suicide stories were false, but he described the situation as dire.

“The drought this year in the sierra is atypical … there wasn’t rain and now, in the winter, there wasn’t snow,” Father Avila told Catholic News Service.

He estimated the food produced in the region would run out during February, “When the problem will be worse.”

The Jesuits, who have served the Copper Canyon for decades, are working with the Chihuahua business community to deliver relief through its long-established networks.

The federal government said in a Jan. 17 press release it was sending in food and blankets and opening shelters to the area.

Father Avila said the government is welcome to join the relief efforts, but he said of past state efforts: “They’ll come in and give things away. We disagree with this because it creates dependence.” He added that disaster relief and social programs often are used for partisan political purposes in Mexico.

“We want to create a dialogue, get to know the problems … to solve them,” he said.

[Catholic News Service]

Late in November I arrived at the Jesuit Center in the reclusive hills of Wernersville, Pa., on a blindingly dark and stormy night to begin a silent five-day retreat. Such a scenario might have compelled someone more compos mentis to turn around. But that was the point. As a 43-year-old mother of three wrung out from three years of panic attacks triggered by the specter of financial ruin, I needed a solid period of quiet to recombobulate. Cheaply.

I am neither Catholic nor anything in particular, but I yearned for a snippet of the no-frills spiritual solitude. The Jesuits, I’d read, were the guys to go to concerning such matters. Indeed, to engage in periods of quiet contemplation with a full-stop break from everyday life was central to the philosophy of the Jesuit founder Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556). It still is. Today, some 200 Jesuits are engaged full time in directing spiritual retreats at more than 20 centers in the United States.

But there were other reasons I’d opted for the Jesuit Center in Wernserville over, say, a spa vacation, yoga retreat or vision quest. For one thing, the center advertised an Arcadian setting and drivable proximity from my home in Brooklyn. For another, the cost was $560 for five days, including room, board and a daily hourlong conversation with a spiritual director, who would escort me through Scripture-based prayer and meditation.

Moreover, the more luxe-sounding excursions I’d considered often seemed to involve a time commitment of a week or more, along with New Age locution that somehow did not sit right. A solo quest during which animal “spirit guides” could conceivably rip out my pancreas after the sweat lodge? No.

To read more, please visit the New York Times story.

The goal of the National Seminar on Jesuit Higher Education and its publication of Conversations is to strengthen the Jesuit identity of our 28 colleges and universities. Each issue is written to stimulate the campus dialogue – through departmental discussions or faculty symposiums – on the pursuit of various ideals.

The following articles are excerpts from the current issue of Conversations magazine. An archive of past issues may be found here.

Dear Faculty, Ask for More
Experiencing The Spirit
How We Got Here
Seeking Work-Family Balance: Perils and Possibilities
So You Want to Be A President?
The Importance of Good Coffee

The opinions stated in the articles herein are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Jesuit Conference of the United States.

Feedback or comments? Click here to contact the editor.

The chapel is graceful and small with wooden columns across the front and a domed ceiling within. It is the oldest standing building in all of Idaho, completed in 1853 after several years of construction by Jesuit missionaries and people of the Schitsu’umsh (the present day Coeur d’Alene, “Those Who Are Found Here”) working together. The foot-thick walls are plastered with mud, wattle-and-daub style, and in places the handprints of the builders remain visible—a grace note of brown hands and white hands, two cultures, two faiths joined. And while the tribe appreciated the many spiritual teachings brought by the missionaries, a more recent Coeur d’Alene elder, Millie Nicodemus, said, “We didn’t think they’d stay!”

That delightful exclamation by Nicodemus, now deceased, is on a banner just down the hill from the chapel, where a decade of fund-raising by the tribe and others has this fall resulted in the opening of a new, $3.26 million museum as the permanent home for an exhibition, Sacred Encounters: Father De Smet and the Indians of the Rocky Mountain West. It strives to tell the full story of this encounter—the Native view as well as the white, the sorrows as well as the joys. Sacred Encounters is packed with artifacts from as far away as Europe, but it’s not static. Visitors walk through a series of “acts” or rooms in a rich audio-visual atmosphere—nature sounds and Coeur d’Alene singing fading into Gregorian chants and Latin prayer—as the exhibit creates a dynamic portrait of two cultures, two faiths colliding.

The original Sacred Encounters, which toured the U.S. and Canada, was so large—more than 7,000 square feet—that it was unable to be housed in any museum near the Coeur d’Alene. It opened at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana, to the east, and also stopped at Tacoma, Washington to the west, each requiring a drive of more than five hours from the Coeur d’Alene reservation.

The unique power of Sacred Encounters, telling deep stories of the joys and the pains, the opened hearts and the disappointments, surprised viewers at the opening in Bozeman. Historian Jacqueline Peterson, recently retired from Washington State University, remembers walking into a room and, “seeing a group of elders [Flathead Salish and Coeur d’Alene] and a group of Jesuits, and they were crying together. It was a profound experience. It was sadness, and it was pride that the story was being told and [that] it was about them.”

For more information about the exhibit, call 208-682-3814.  Sacred Encounters is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., daily. Old Mission State Park is just off Interstate 90 in Cataldo, Idaho (Exit 39), 58 miles east of Spokane.

[Indian Country Today Media Network]