Speakers & Presenters

Archbishop Oscar Romero

Speakers and Presenters

 

Roberto Cuéllar
Roberto Cuéllar is the Executive Director of the Interamerican Institute of Human Rights (IIHR). A native Salvadoran, Mr. Cuéllar began his career defending human rights in 1975 in El Salvador by helping to form Socorro Jurídico, an organization providing legal assistance to the victims of human rights abuses. As a close collaborator and legal advisor of Archbishop Oscar Romero, he was forced to flee El Salvador after Romero was assassinated in 1980. From exile, he documented more than 1,000 cases of gross human rights violations in his homeland and the surrounding region, and he submitted his evidence to the United Nations and the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights. In 1985 he began to work for the IIHR, providing human rights training to Latin American organizations and other professional services to electoral bodies, courts, religious groups, and social justice organizations throughout Central America. In the 1990s Mr. Cuéllar was an active participant in the UN-brokered Salvadoran and Guatemalan peace processes. He is the recipient of numerous human rights awards, including the Letelier Moffitt Human

Lawrence S. Cunningham
Lawrence S. Cunningham is the John A. O'Brien Professor of Theology at Notre Dame. His interests include systematic theology and culture, and Christian spirituality and its history. His most recent book is A Brief History of Saints (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005). He has edited or written sixteen other books and serves as coeditor of the academic monograph series "Studies in Theology and Spirituality" as well as associate editor for a number of scholarly journals. The author of over fifty articles in peer-reviewed or solicited journals and books, he has also written over two hundred articles for pastoral and popular outlets. He has won three Catholic Press Association awards for religious writing (1987, 1999, and 2000). The religion book notes columnist for Commonweal for over ten years, he has won awards for his teaching at Notre Dame: the Fenlon Award from Sorin College (1989) and a Kaneb Award in 1999. He is currently finishing a book on Roman Catholicism for Cambridge University Press and had been appointed Christianity editor of the forthcoming Norton Anthology of World Religions.

Margaret Hebblethwaite
Margaret Hebblethwaite is the author of numerous books including Motherhood and God; Finding God in all Things: The Way of St Ignatius; and Six New Gospels: New Testament Women Tell Their Stories. She was Assistant Editor at The Tablet, a prominent international Catholic weekly, from 1991 - 2000. Following a visit to Paraguay, she resigned this prestigious job to live and work in a Small Christian Community in Santa María de Fe, a former Jesuit mission. Her years in the Third World have given her an opportunity to share the “good news to the poor,” as well as countless opportunities to listen to the voices from the margins and to learn how the indigenous Guarani people of Santa María live out their conviction: ñamba'apo oñondivepa (we must all work together.)

Rev. Stephen P. Judd, MM
Rev. Stephen P. Judd, MM, is a missionary priest whose mission commitments have focused on the indigenous peoples of Latin America. In Peru (1975–2002), he was the director of the Instituto de Pastoral Andina (IPA)and director of Campus Ministry at the National University of the Altiplano. In Bolivia, he served as director of the Maryknoll Mission Center and Language Institute in Cochabamba (2002–07). He was a member of the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers General Council (1990–96). Fr. Judd resides in Cochabamba, where he is the official representative in Latin America for the Christopher movement, while he continues his commitment to the formation of leaders for Church and civil society throughout Latin America. He holds an MA in Latin American literature from the University of New Mexico and a PhD in the sociology of religion from the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA.

Michael E. Lee
Michael E. Lee, assistant professor of theology at Fordham University, focuses on the interconnection between theological and Christological assertions and Christian praxis/practice. Taking all theology as correlational in some form, he seeks to understand different theologies in light of their historical realities and thus to account more clearly for the manner in which they advocate incarnating the Christian life. 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.) Lee is the author of Bearing the Weight of Salvation: The Soteriology of Ignacio Ellacuría (Herder & Herder, 2008). 

Otto Maduro
Otto Maduro, professor of World Christianity at Drew University, has chaired Drew University's PhD program in Religion and Society and currently co-chairs its Hispanic Institute of Theology. He holds a PhD from the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium). He has been a visiting professor at Notre Dame and at many other universities in the US and Latin America. Maduro is currently doing research on Latin Pentecostal congregations in Newark, NJ.

Archbishop Mendes
The Most Reverend Luciano Mendes de Almeida, SJ, is Archbishop of Mariana, Brazil, and President of the Brazilian Conference of Catholic Bishops. Throughout four decades as a Jesuit priest, as Auxiliary Bishop of São Paulo, and now as Archbishop of Mariana, he has lived and ministered in the Romero tradition by relentlessly striving to improve an unjust society, especially in his work with the impoverished street children of São Paulo.

Eugene Palumbo
Eugene Palumbo, a freelance journalist, met Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1979 when he was covering the Latin American Bishops Conference in Mexico. First visiting El Salvador in 1980, immediately after Archbishop Romero’s murder, he moved there in 1984 to cover the Salvadoran civil war full time. As a freelance journalist, he has reported for, among others, National Public Radio, the British Broadcasting Company (BBC), the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC), the Christian Science Monitor, Commonweal magazine and National Catholic Reporter. He is currently the local stringer in El Salvador for the New York Times and Time magazine. He also teaches a course on the history of El Salvador’s civil war in a study-abroad program for US university students.

Margaret Pfeil
Margaret Pfeil, assistant professor of theology at Notre Dame, specializes in Catholic social thought and the development of moral doctrine. Her articles have appeared in Louvain Studies, Josephinum Journal of Theology, The Journal for Peace & Justice Studies, New Theology Review, and the Mennonite Quarterly Review. She is currently finishing the book “Social Sin: Social Reconciliation?” and with Margaret Eletta Guider, OSF, coediting “White Privilege: Implications for the Church, the Catholic University, and Theology.” She is a founder of the St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker House in South Bend.

Cardinal Rodríguez
Oscar Andrés Cardinal Rodríguez Maradiaga, SDB, is Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras and the past president of the Conference of Latin American Bishops. He served as the Vatican spokesperson to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank on the issue of Third World debt, and he is one of the authors of Ecclesia in America, the 1999 Papal Exhortation based on the Special Synod for America. Cardinal Rodriguez has tirelessly campaigned for human rights, brokered numerous peace accords, and led rebuilding efforts following earthquakes and hurricanes—endeavors that continue the work of Archbishop Romero. In November of 2002, he will be awarded the Notre Dame Prize for Distinguished Service in Latin America.

Bishop Ruiz
Don Samuel Ruiz Garcia is Bishop Emeritus of San Cristobal de Las Casas, in the Mexican state of Chiapas. He is president of the Oscar Romero International Solidarity Secretariat, the Fray Bartolome de Las Casas Human Rights Center, and the Center of Service and Advice for Peace in Mexico. Throughout the five decades of his ministry, Bishop Ruiz has championed the rights, welfare, and human dignity of Mexico’s indigenous communities. In 1974, he invited representatives of all indigenous peoples to participate in a National Indigenous Congress, and he forged their recommendations into a comprehensive social-action program. When the Chiapas-based Zapatista National Liberation Army declared war against the Mexican Army in 1994, Bishop Ruiz single-handedly negotiated a ceasefire that prevented what would otherwise have been an appallingly bloody civil war.

Margaret Swedish
Margaret Swedish is the Director of the Religious Task Force on Central America and Mexico (RTFCAM), and the author of Oscar Arnulfo Romero: Prophet to the Americas and of A Message Too Precious to Be Silenced. The Religious Task Force on Central America and Mexico was founded in March 1980, two weeks before the assassination of Archbishop Romero. It was created by U.S. Catholic religious leaders in response to Romero’s call for international solidarity with his persecuted people who were suffering under the weight of military dictatorship, government repression, and horrendous social and economic inequities. For over two decades, RTFCAM has helped thousands of North Americans walk in faith-based solidarity with our sisters and brothers of Central America and Mexico. Both its mission and the interpersonal relationships it helps to foster are based on shared commitment to social justice, peaceful resolution of conflict, and faith reflections deeply rooted in the aspiration for justice, freedom from oppression, human dignity, and God-given human rights.

Dr. Rubén Zamora
Dr. Rubén Zamora is a prominent Salvadoran political leader, a former professor at the Universidad Centroamerica, and one of Latin America’s foremost champions of peace and social justice. While serving as Speaker of the National Assembly during and after El Salvador’s twelve-year-long civil war and as the presidential candidate of the Democratic Convergence party in 1994 and 1999, he steadfastly championed the God-given rights of the poor, the oppressed, and the marginalized majority of his country’s citizens. He lost the presidential elections to the extreme-rightist ARENA candidates in elections “supervised” by heavily-armed paramilitary forces who openly intimidated campesino and blue-collar voters. Nevertheless, he has seen his Democratic Convergence Party and the allied Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front win half the seats in the National Assembly less than a decade after its supporters were being machine-gunned by military death squads. Dr. Zamora remains active in Salvadoran politics, serving as a voice of moderation and reconciliation in a nation that is still dangerously polarized.

Past Speakers & Presenters


University of Notre Dame • September 25 - 27, 2014
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.