Cardinal Michael Czerny to Deliver Social Teachings Lecture

Catholics from all over the world are invited to attend a Zoom lecture by a Vatican cardinal on the social teachings of Pope Francis on November 14 at 10:30 am South African time.

Cardinal Michael Czerny, president of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, will deliver the annual Cardijn Lecture on the theme “Siblings All, Sign of the Times: The Social Teaching of Pope Francis”, which is also the title of his newly published book of the same name jointly authored with Italian Fr Christian Barone.

The lecture is hosted by the Australian Cardijn Institute, named after Belgian Cardinal Joseph Cardijn, founder of the Young Christian Workers movement.

Cardinal Czerny, a Jesuit, was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia (now Czechia) in 1946. His mother’s family were Jewish converts to Catholicism. After the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia, his maternal grandparents and two of his mother’s brothers were interned in Terezín, where his grandfather died. The others were moved to Auschwitz and the brothers died in labour camps. Michael’s mother, because she was Jewish, was forced into farm labour and then imprisoned for 20 months while his father was forced to farm labour for refusing to divorce her.

In 1948, the family migrated to Canada, settling in Montreal, Quebec. Czerny joined the Jesuits there in 1964 and was ordained in 1973.

In 2002 he founded the African Jesuit AIDS Network, based in Kenya, and directed it until 2010. During these nine years, he initiated and coordinated efforts by Jesuits and others in nearly 30 countries of Sub-Saharan Africa to provide pastoral care, education, health services, social and spiritual support, and to fight stigma for victims of HIV/AIDS, and channelled resources from foreign sources.

In 2010, Fr Czerny became the personal assistant of Cardinal Peter Turkson at the Pontifical Council for Justice, a position he held until 2016 when Pope Francis appointed him under-secretary of the Migrants and Refugees Section of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.

On May 4, 2019, Pope Francis named him one of two special secretaries for the October 2019 Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon region. He received his red cardinal’s hat on October, 5, 2019.

Pope Francis appointed Cardinal Czerny to head the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development in December 2021.

In an unusual act of diplomacy following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in March 2022, Cardinal Czerny was sent by Pope Francis with humanitarian aid to Ukraine, along with the papal almoner, Cardinal Konrad Krajewski.

For more information, see www.australiancardijninstitute.org/cardinal-michael-czerny-siblings-all-sign-of-the-times-the-social-teaching-of-pope-francis/

Cardinal Czerny will deliver the Cardijn Lecture on Monday, November 14 at 10:30 SA time. Register at:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwvd-qurjsqE9bC8J-FkYqZy6M6Jk9gTZwN