International Conference on Archbishop Oscar Romero 2014

Distinguished Speakers

Keynote Address 
Hesburgh Center Auditorium
Thursday, September 25, 2014
4:00 PM – 6:00 PM

Gustavo Gutiérrez,O.P., John Cardinal O’Hara Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame 
Title: “Pope Francis and the Preferential Option for the Poor”

One of the most prominent figures in Latin American Catholicism, renowned priest Gustavo Gutiérrez is considered the father of liberation theology. Gutiérrez is a prominent author who has studied and taught at universities across America, Europe and South America. His most famous work, A Theology of Liberation (1976), is the foundational text of liberation theology.

Distinguished Lecture and Luncheon
Friday, September 26, 2014
10:00 AM – 12 PM 
Claudia Bernardi, Professor of Community Arts, California College of the Arts
Title:“Monseñor Romero remembered in Perquín, El Salvador”

Claudia Bernardi is an internationally known artist who works in the fields of art, human rights and social justice. In her work over the past two decades –she has combined installation, sculpture, painting, printmaking, and most recently, she has focused her art praxis in community and collaborative art projects working with/ and in collaboration with communities that have suffered state terror, violence and who are victims of human rights violations.

Keynote Speaker and Reception 
Friday, September 26, 2014
5:00 PM – 6:30 PM

Monsignor Ricardo Urioste, President of the Fundación Óscar Arnulfo Romero
Title: TBD

President of the Fundación Óscar Arnulfo Romero. This has been an on-going commitment since the martyrdom of Romero. He was also the Vicar General for Archbishop Romero.

Special Sessions

Saturday, September 27, 2014

Julian Filochowski, Chair of Archbishop Romero Trust in England – Romero: Person and his charisma with the Pontiffs

Roberto Morozzo, Professor, Roma Tre University – Romero’s change after passing of Rutilio Grande

Roberto Cuéllar, Executive Director, Interamerican Institute of Human Rights – The Current Legal Situation in El Salvador

Keynote Address 
Saturday, September 27, 2014

Michael Lee, Associate Professor, Fordham University
Title: “Romero Martyr”

Michael E. Lee, PhD, is associate professor of systematic theology in Fordham University’s Department of Theology and Institute for Latin American and Latino Studies, where he teaches courses in liberation theology, Christology, and spirituality. His current research involves an ongoing dialogue between the work of Latin American liberation theologians and those of the so-called Radical Orthodoxy, and the relationship between theologians (e.g. Athanasius, Bonaventure, and Ellacuría) and saints who influenced their thought (Anthony, Francis, and Oscar Romero, respectively.).

Tributes
Saturday, September 27, 2014
Dean Brackley, SJ and Rev. Edward L. Clearly, O.P.

Dean Brackley, SJ was an extraordinary Jesuit. His more than twenty years of service in El Salvador included pastoral work in numerous parishes, meeting with delegations visiting El Salvador, immersion trips, but at all times, he promoted Gospel values from the perspective of the poor.  His 2004 book The Call to Discernment in Troubled Times is a powerful expression of God’s providential love for the poor expressed in the Ignatian vision.

Rev. Edward L. Cleary, O.P. A member of the Dominican Central Province of St. Albert the Great of Chicago taught Political Science at Providence College between 1993 and 2011. Fr. Cleary research, and personal passion for Latin America was sparked during his first assignment as a young Dominican priest in Bolivia. A social scientist and a Dominican missionary, he studied, lectured, and wrote about the status of the Catholic Church, politics, and human rights throughout Latin America. His book How Latin America Saved the Soul of the Catholic Church, tells a remarkable story of the transformation of the Latin American Church.

Misa Salvadoreña
Saturday, September 27, 2014
Time: 4:00 p.m.

Performance by Coro Primavera of the University of Notre Dame

Directed by Barbara Ziliak, former liturgy director for the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Cross at Saint Mary’s.

Conference Presenters

Matthew Ashley is associate professor and chair of the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. He has presented and written in the areas of political theology, liberation theology, Christian spirituality, and religion and science. He is the author of Interruptions: Mysticism, Politics and Theology in the Work of Johann Baptist Metz (1998) and has edited and translated several works of Johann Baptist Metz, including Faith in History and Society: Studies for a Practical Fundamental Theology (2007) and A Passion for God: The Mystical-Political Dimension of Christianity (1998). Most recently, he has written on science and religion, with a focus on the dialogue between Christian faith and the science of evolution. He earned his doctorate in theology at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Claudia Bernardi, currently professor of community arts at the California College of the Arts, is an artist internationally known for her work in art, human rights, and social justice. Over the past two decades, she has combined installation, sculpture, painting, and printmaking. Most recently, she has focused her art praxis in community and collaborative art in collaboration with communities that have suffered state terror and violence. Born in Buenos Aires, Bernardi lived through the early years of Argentine military rule (1976–1983), leaving the country in 1979. She returned to work with the Forensic Anthropology Team, established to supply evidence of human rights violations carried out against civilians. Subsequently, she participated in exhumations of mass graves in El Salvador, Guatemala, Argentina, and Ethiopia, and recognized that art could be used to educate, elucidate, and articulate the communal memories of survivors. She is the founder and director of the School of Art and Open Studio of Perquín, El Salvador, serving children, youth, adults, and the elderly. This unprecedented art, education, and human rights initiative is rooted in the partnership created between art, artists, and local institutions, and NGOs. Bernardi holds an MFA from the National Institute of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires, an MA and a second MFA from the University of California at Berkeley, and an honorary doctorate from the College of Wooster. Previously, she taught at the Universidad de El Salvador, Mills College, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the University of Michigan.

Gilberto Cárdenas, the executive director of the Notre Dame Center for Arts and Culture, was the founding director of the Institute for Latino Studies (1999–2012), and also served as assistant provost, University of Notre Dame. He held the Julian Samora Chair in Latino Studies during this time. He has worked in the area of immigration for over 40 years and has gained international recognition as a scholar of Mexican immigration. He is a professor in Notre Dame’s Department of Sociology and a Kellogg Institute faculty fellow. From 1995 to 2013, he served as the executive director for the Inter-University Program for Latino Research (IUPLR), a national consortium of 25 member centers and institutes. Previously, Cárdenas taught at the University of Texas at Austin (1975–1999). He received his BA from California State University at Los Angeles and his MA and PhD from the University of Notre Dame.

Paolo Carozza is professor of law at Notre Dame Law School and the director of the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, an interdisciplinary, university-wide institute focusing on the themes of democracy and human development. His expertise is in the areas of comparative law, human rights, and international law; his extensive writings have been published in Europe and Latin America as well as in the United States. From 2006 to 2010 he was a member of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and served as its president (2008–09). The former director of the Center for Civil and Human Rights (2011–13), he continues to direct its JSD program in international human rights law.

Christine Cervenak is associate director at the Center for Civil and Human Rights and concurrent assistant professor of law at the University of Notre Dame. She has experience in international law, conflict resolution, and human rights, having served in the Office of the Legal Advisor of the US Department of State, as Legal Officer for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency’s West Bank Operations, and with the UN’s peace operation in El Salvador. Before joining the University in 2010, she was a director at the University of Chile Law School’s Human Rights Center. A Notre Dame graduate, she studied at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, earned a JD from UCLA, clerked on the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and was a visiting fellow at Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program. In 2001, she was honored by Notre Dame with the Rev. John J. Cavanaugh, CSC, Award.

Rev. Michael E. Connors, CSC, is a pastoral theologian and associate professional specialist in theology at the University of Notre Dame, where he directs the John S. Marten Program in Homiletics and Liturgics. He is the author of We Preach Christ Crucified (Liturgical Press, 2013) and Inculturated Pastoral Planning: The US Hispanic Experience (Gregorian University Press, 2001).

James F. Creagan, the former ambassador to Honduras, is currently professor of international studies at the University of the Incarnate Word. He began his long and distinguished diplomatic career at the Agency for International Development under President Kennedy. Appointed to the Foreign Service by President Johnson, he subsequently held posts as chargé d’affaires and deputy ambassador to Italy and, separately, the Holy See; consul general in Sao Paulo, Brazil; political counselor in Brasilia and Portugal; US consul in Naples, Italy; and political/labor officer in US embassies in Lima, Mexico City, San Salvador and Rome. President Clinton named him US ambassador to Honduras in 1996. In 2009, under President Obama, Creagan served as chargé d’affaires to Bolivia and chief of the US mission there. In November 2009, he was an international observer for presidential elections in Honduras. Creagan retired from the Foreign Service in 1999, and became president of John Cabot University in Rome, Italy, retiring in 2005 as president emeritus. In 2006, he joined the University of the Incarnate Word as ambassador in residence and professor of international affairs. He continues to teach there and lecture in Texas and elsewhere. Creagan graduated from the University of Notre Dame and holds a PhD from the University of Virginia.

Roberto Cuéllar is the regional director for Central America at the Human Rights Education Institute of the Organization of Ibero-American States. From 1999 until 2003, he was executive director of the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights (IIDH). He began his career defending human rights in 1975 in his native El Salvador, when he helped to form Socorro Jurídico, an organization that provided legal assistance to victims of human rights abuses. A close collaborator and legal advisor to Archbishop Óscar Romero, he was forced to flee El Salvador after Romero was assassinated in 1980. From exile, he helped to document 1,000 cases of gross human rights violations in his homeland and the surrounding region; the evidence was submitted to the United Nations. In 1985 Cuéllar began his work for IIDH, providing human rights training to electoral bodies, courts, religious groups, and social justice organizations throughout Central America. In the 1990s, he was an active participant in the UN-brokered Salvadoran and Guatemalan peace processes; worked with the Organization of American States’s Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and Inter-American Court of Human Rights; and directed special IIDH programs in Guatemala and Cuba. He has also been a consultant for Amnesty International and a visiting researcher at Harvard Law School. He has received numerous awards, including the Letelier Moffitt Human Rights Award.

Rev. Virgilio Elizondo is the Notre Dame Professor of Pastoral and Hispanic Theology at the University of Notre Dame. From humble beginnings as the son of Mexican immigrants, Fr. Elizondo grew up to be the recognized “father of US Latino religious thought,” hailed by Time magazine as one of the top spiritual innovators of the 21st century. Remarkably, Elizondo is equally renowned for his capacities as priest, humanitarian, and scholar. He has celebrated Mass before a television audience of more than six million households and is considered the leading interpreter of US Latino religion by the national and international media. Elizondo speaks seven languages, has written numerous books and articles, and has presented more than 40 keynotes and special lectures around the globe. He has received several prestigious awards for his work on behalf of immigrants and the Mexican-American community, and in 1997 was the recipient of the Laetare Medal, the highest honor bestowed by Notre Dame. Elizondo's recent publications include: A God of Incredible Surprises (2003) and Galilean Journey: The Mexican-American Promise (2000).

Robert Ellsberg is the editor-in chief and publisher of Orbis Books, the publishing arm of Maryknoll. He was the managing editor of the Catholic Worker for two years (1976–78), a job that led to his working with Dorothy Day for the last five years of her life. In 1987 he became editor-in-chief of Orbis Books and in 2006, its publisher. He is the author of several award-winning books, including All Saints: Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for Our Time (1997)and The Saints Guide to Happiness (2003). He edited The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day(2008) and All the Way to Heaven: Selected Letters of Dorothy Day (2012). Ellsberg holds a master’s from Harvard Divinity School.

Sr. Pat Farrell, OSF, a Franciscan sister of Dubuque, Iowa, is the former president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) (2010–13). Early in her religious life, she worked in religious education in rural Iowa and taught English and theology at the high school level. Subsequently, she served for five years in pastoral work and community organizing with the Hispanic community in San Antonio, Texas. For 20 years, Farrell worked in Latin America, first in Chile and later in El Salvador, in the areas of parish ministry, human rights, women’s issues, mental health, and holistic healing. She has also worked in the behavioral health field, predominantly with Spanish-speakers in Chicago and Omaha. Her work as a psychotherapist has led her to serve a variety of immigrant and refugee groups, survivors of war and torture, and women and men religious. Recently, she completed a six-year term on the leadership team of the Sisters of St. Francis of Dubuque, Iowa.

Julian Filochowski, a founder, trustee, and the current chair of the UK-based Archbishop Romero Trust, is the former CEO of the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) (1982–2003). He also served nine years with the Catholic Institute for International Relations in London (now known as Progressio), campaigning on Latin American human rights and development issues. During this time, he worked with Archbishop Óscar Romero, organized his Nobel Prize nomination, and advised him at the 1979 CELAM Conference in Puebla. He also attended Romero’s funeral on behalf of Cardinal Basil Hume and the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales. Filochowski is also a trustee of the Carmelite Priory at Aylesford. In 2004 the Jesuit University in San Salvador (UCA) awarded him an honorary doctorate in human rights.

Rev. Patrick D. Gaffney, CSC is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame. A specialist in the Middle East and Eastern Africa, his research interests include religion and politics; social violence and peacemaking; human rights and humanitarian intervention; and Islamic society and popular movements. His current work looks at religion, violence, and reconciliation in the context of strained ethnic relations and the breakdown of political and economic order in central Africa. He is the author of The Prophet's Pulpit: Islamic Preaching in Contemporary Egypt(University of California Press, 1994) and "Vatican II and Tantur," in Timothy S. Lowe, ed., Hope of Unity: Living Ecumenism Today (Aphorisma, 2013), among many other publications. Gaffney was the 2002 winner of Notre Dame’s Reinhold Niebuhr Award, which honors a person whose life and writings promote or exemplify social justice. He holds a PhD from the University of Chicago.

Rev. Gustavo Gutiérrez, OP, is the John Cardinal O'Hara Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, where he is also a Kellogg Institute faculty fellow. One of the most prominent figures in Latin American Catholicism, Gutiérrez is considered the father of liberation theology. His most famous work, A Theology of Liberation (1976), is the foundational text of liberation theology. He has studied and taught at universities across North and South America and Europe. A member of the Peruvian Academy of Language, Gutiérrez was awarded the Legion of Honor by the French government in 1993 for his tireless work for human dignity and life, and against oppression, in Latin America and the developing world. He is currently working on a book exploring the historical background and continuing theological relevance of the preferential option for the poor.

Rev. John P. Keefe, CSC, is director of research for pastoral ministry among Hispanics and cultural sensitivity efforts for the Congregation of Holy Cross in the United States. He has worked extensively with deacons and their formation in Nevada and Arizona and is presently spiritual director of the deacon formation program in Spanish for the Diocese of Fort Wayne/South Bend as well as chair of the Hispanic Ministries Committee of the Congregations of Holy Cross, US Province. Keefe offers training in "Building Intercultural Competence for Ministers" for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and is involved in giving retreats on spiritual life in the United States, Mexico, and East Africa, especially through the Cursillo Movement.

Thomas M. Kelly is professor of systematic theology at Creighton University, where he has taught since 2002. He has also taught immersion courses in El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Bolivia, and Peru for more than a decade, utilizing immersion education, especially in reference to Fair Trade practices, to educate first-world university students about the reality of global poverty and suffering, the Catholic Church’s response, and their own obligation to use their privilege to make a concrete difference in the world. He has published nationally and internationally on philosophical hermeneutics, liberation theology, immersion education, marriage, and social ethics. His latest book, When the Gospel Grows Feet: Rutilio Grande, SJ, and the Church of El Salvador: An Ecclesiology in Context (Liturgical Press, 2013), analyzes the life, ministry and death of the first Jesuit killed in the civil war in El Salvador (1980–1992). Kelly holds a BA from the University of Notre Dame and a PhD from Boston College.

Michael E. Lee is associate professor of systematic theology at Fordham University, where he also teaches in the Latin American and Latino Studies Institute. He researches and lectures in the areas of liberation theology, Christology, and soteriology, and their intersection with Christian discipleship and spirituality. The award-winning author of Bearing the Weight of Salvation: The Soteriology of Ignacio Ellacuría (Crossroad, 2010), he recently translated, edited, and wrote an introduction to Ignacio Ellacuría: Essays on History, Liberation, and Salvation (Orbis, 2013). He is currently working on a book about the theological legacy of Archbishop Óscar Romero. Lee has served on the governing board of the Catholic Theological Society of America and is past president of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the United States. He holds both a BA and a PhD from the University of Notre Dame.

Victor Maqque is a PhD candidate in history at the University of Notre Dame and the recipient of a Kellogg Institute Dissertation Year Fellowship. A Quechua native from the southern highlands of Peru, Maqque previously taught at the Universidad Nacional del Altiplano, in Puno, Peru, where he also co-founded and directed the Pastoral Universitaria. In addition to his doctoral studies in Notre Dame’s Department of History, he is an instructor of Quechua in the Department of Romance Languages and  Literatures.

Guadalupe Montalvo is a Salvadoran who grew up in a rural farming area. As violence in the country increased in the late 1970s, the area turned into a war zone, and her family was forced to flee.  For 23 years, during and after the war, she was a catechist in her parish. After working for 17 years in maquila factories, she became a staff member at Casa de la Solidaridad, a study-abroad program for US university students in El Salvador at Casa de la Solidaridad, a study-abroad program for US university students in El Salvador that was cofounded by Rev. Dean Brackley, SJ. 

Gene Palumbo, a journalist and teacher, met Archbishop Romero in 1979, when he was covering the meeting of the Latin American Bishops Conference (CELAM) in Puebla, Mexico. In early 1980, after Archbishop Romero’s murder, he went to El Salvador to cover the civil war, and ended up staying on. He has reported for National Public Radio (NPR), the British Broadcasting Company (BBC), the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC), the Christian Science Monitor, and Time and Commonweal magazines, among others. He is currently the New York Times’ local correspondent in El Salvador. He also teaches a course on El Salvador’s civil war at Casa de la Solidaridad, a study-abroad program for US university students in El Salvador that was cofounded by Rev. Dean Brackley, SJ.

Mauro Pando is the former director of the Counseling Ministry at the Franciscan Renewal Center in Phoenix, Arizona. After growing up in Argentina, he attended the University of Notre Dame and served in the US Navy, then completed his theology studies at the Catholic University in Santiago, Chile. His pastoral work in Chile included developing base communities and working with CENFA (Centro Nacional de la Familia or National Family Center). Upon his return to the US after the 1973 military coup, he received a master’s in counseling from Arizona State University. He worked in counseling psychology for the next 25 years, at the Desert Samaritan Hospital, at Phoenix Interfaith Counseling, and for 12 years, at the Franciscan Renewal Center. In the last five years before he retired, he was program director at the Wellness Community of Central Arizona, a cancer support group. During the 80s, he was involved with the Valley Religious Taskforce, part of the Sanctuary Movement, in response to the needs of refugees coming to the US from Central America. During the 90s, he was on the Board of Directors of the Florence Immigration and Refugee Rights Project. For the past 10 years, he has been part of the team that provides a grief and loss retreat twice a year at the Franciscan Renewal Center. He has offered workshops on Archbishop Romero through the Justice and Peace Ministry, focusing on the film Monseñor: The Last Journey of Óscar Romero, and on Damian Zynda’s book on the archbishop.

Rev. Robert S. Pelton, CSC, is director of Latin American/North American Church Concerns (LANACC) at the University of Notre Dame, where he is professor of theology emeritus and a faculty fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies. Pelton is also the director emeritus for both the Institute for Pastoral and Social Ministry and the Institute for Clergy Education. His attendance at several major meetings of Latin American pastoral leaders and his research on the Church in the region have led him to write extensively about the Council of Latin American Bishops. A Romero scholar, Pelton is responsible for several publications about the archbishop, including Monsignor Romero: A Bishop for the New Millennium (2004) and Archbishop Romero (2006). His film, Monseñor: The Last Journey of Óscar Romero, received the Latin American Studies Association Award of Merit in Film in 2012.

Rev. David Perrin, OMI, is professor of religious studies at St. Jerome's University, Canada. After earning a BSc in chemistry from the University of Western Ontario, Perrin taught high school in Haiti for two years. Upon his return, he began philosophy studies at the University of Ottawa. His career path then led him to Rome for three years of graduate studies. He obtained his doctorate from the University of Ottawa in 1995.  He is the former dean of the Faculty of Theology at Saint Paul University, a past president of the International Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality, and former president and vice-chancellor of St. Jerome’s University. He has published several books  as well as popular and scholarly articles on mysticism, asceticism, spirituality direction, Christian spirituality, and related topics. His research interests focus on the application of philosophical hermeneutical theory to classic Christian texts in order to surface new meanings for today's world. His latest book is Studying Christian Spirituality(Routledge, 2007).

Margaret Pfeil is an associate professional specialist at the University of Notre Dame, holding joint appointments in the Department of Theology and the Center for Social Concerns. Her research interests include Catholic social thought, racial justice, ecological ethics, ecumenical dialogue, and peace studies; she is a Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies faculty fellow. With Tobias Winright, she coedited Violence, Transformation, and the Sacred: They Shall Be Called Children of God (Orbis, 2012). With Gerald Schlabach, she is coeditor of Sharing Peace: Mennonites and Catholics in Conversation (Liturgical Press, 2013), and with Laurie Cassidy and Alex Mikulich she coauthored The Scandal of White Complicity in US Hyper-Incarceration: A Nonviolent Spirituality of White Resistance (Palgrave, 2013). She is a cofounder and resident of the St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker Community in South Bend, Indiana. Pfeil holds both a BA and PhD from the University of Notre Dame, as well as an MTS from the Weston Jesuit School of Theology.

Sr. Ana María Pineda, RSM, is associate professor of religious studies at Santa Clara University, where she teaches courses in Latino/Hispanic theology. Pineda has published numerous articles on topics related to Hispanic ministry, popular religion, pastoral practices, and the importance of oral tradition. Recent research interests include the lives and legacies of Archbishop Romero and Rutilio Grande, SJ. Pineda is a founding member of the Hispanic Theological Initiative, which provides scholarships and mentoring for Latino/doctoral theological students, the past president of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the US (ACHTUS), and the coeditor of Dialogue Rejoined: Theology and Ministry in the United States Hispanic Reality (1995). She has served on the boards of many institutions, including the Louisville Institute, ACHTUS, and the Advisory Committee for the Hispanic Theological Scholarship Initiative. Born in San Salvador, El Salvador, Pineda was raised in the Latino neighborhood of San Francisco, California.

Tom Quigley is the former foreign policy advisor on Latin America and the Caribbean for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. He was particularly involved in the human rights issues that engaged much of the Church in both Latin America and the US from the 1960s through the 1980s, focusing first on Brazil, then on the Southern Cone, especially Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, and then on Central America. He was a founding member of the Washington Office on Latin America and the Religious Task Force on Central America and Mexico, among other organizations. He was also the USCCB advisor on Asian affairs, with a concentration on religious freedom and human rights issues. After receiving his degree in philosophy from Maryknoll and serving in the Army, Quigley undertook graduate studies in English literature, linguistics, and English language. While teaching at the University of Michigan’s English Language Institute, he developed the Michigan Newman Club’s foreign student program, which led to his being asked to direct the then National Catholic Welfare Conference office for foreign visitors and international education. From there he became assistant director of the USCC Division for Latin America and then Latin American specialist in the International Justice and Peace Office. He has edited and contributed chapters to books on religion and foreign policy, and published numerous articles and reviews, especially on issues relating to the Church in Latin America and Asia.

The Most Rev. Ricardo Ramírez, CSB, is bishop emeritus of Las Cruces, New Mexico. Ordained on December 10, 1966 in Houston, Texas, he is a member of the Congregation of St. Basil. Pope John Paul II named him titular bishop of Vatarba and auxiliary bishop of San Antonio in 1981, and in 1982 he became the first bishop of the Diocese of Las Cruces, New Mexico, where he served until 2013. He was the US representative to the Fifth General Conference of Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean in Aparecida, Brazil. He holds honorary doctorates from Neumann College (Kansas), the University of St. Michael's College (Toronto), and Siena Heights University (Michigan).

Rev. Carlos Sánchez has been the pastor of the First Baptist Church in San Salvador for 11 years. His friendship with Archbishop Romero grew out of their work with victims of the repression, their participation in Christian Unity Week, and other ecumenical activities. Sanchez also worked with Fr. Manuel Reyes on a project supported by Mons. Romero, to help family members of political prisoners. When a death squad murdered Fr. Reyes in 1980, Sánchez, who had already been receiving death threats, went into exile in Mexico. Tired of being away from his country, he returned in 1983 and, along with a group of Catholics and Protestants, founded Diaconia, an organization that provided assistance to victims of the war. In 1992 Sanchez was invited to Mexico to witness the signing of the peace accords that ended the war. A Baptist since the age of 16, Sánchez was called to ministry and studied for five years at the Seminario Bautista in Mexico. He has served as pastor at numerous churches in Mexico and El Salvador, and been a Bible teacher at two Baptist schools in El Salvador. He also served as director and professor at El Salvador’s Latin American Baptist Seminary, and was the executive director of the Baptist Association of El Salvador from 1985 until 2002. On the international level, Sanchez has been a member of the board of directors of the Latin American Council of Churches and the central committee of the World Council of Churches.

Rachel Tomas Morgan is the director of International Service Learning at the Center for Social Concerns, University of Notre Dame, where she oversees the international engagement efforts of the Center. Tomas Morgan designed, implemented, and directs the International Summer Service Learning Program (ISSLP) and works with other Center colleagues on community-based learning abroad and short-term international seminars. She also works with faculty across the University interested in developing courses that include an international experiential or community-based-learning component and consults on international-related initiatives across the University. Tomas Morgan serves on the working group for international volunteerism with the Brookings Institute and on the boards of the US Catholic Mission Association, the Congregation of Holy Cross Mission Center, and the Near West Side Neighborhood Organization of South Bend. She holds an MA in systematic theology from the University of Notre Dame.

Monsignor Ricardo Urioste, the president of the Fundación Monseñor Romero, served as the Archdiocese of San Salvador’s vicar general during Archbishop Romero's years. Later, he was pastor of Christ the Redeemer Parish in Colonia Escalón, where he worked to encourage wealthy parishioners’ solidarity with the poor. After the 2001 earthquakes, he raised funds to rebuild 126 homes for poorer residents. He set up clinics where the indigent can see a doctor for $3 and receive free medicine. He also set up a co-op to allow parishioners to buy discounted food and a credit union that provides micro loans. In 2002, Msgr. Urioste received an honorary doctorate from Central American University. He retired from active ministry in 2010 but continues to lead the Fundación Monseñor Romero.

Damian Zynda is on the faculty of the Christian Spirituality Program at Creighton University in Omaha. She is also the director of formation at the Church of the Transfiguration in Rochester, NY, where she has developed an adult formation program based on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola. She is an experienced spiritual director and supervisor who has directed retreats in Canada and the US.  Zynda is the author of Archbishop Oscar Romero: A Disciple Who Revealed the Glory of God (University of Scranton Press, 2010). She received a ThD in systematic theology and Christian spirituality from the University of St. Michael’s College, Toronto in 2004.