A journal of academic theology

From the Editor’s Desk – June 2021

The Society of Jesus, along with its institutional partners and Ignatian colleagues, will participate in an “Ignatian Year” from May 20, 2021 through July 31, 2022. The year commemorates the 500th anniversary of the event that began Ignatius’s conversion (his injury via cannonball at the Battle of Pamplona) and is meant to invite participants into their own journey of renewal. Conversion regularly appears as a topic in Pope Francis’s exhortations, as is evidenced in an interview published by both Commonweal and The Tablet in April of last year. Noting our COVID context, the pope stated at the time that “what we are living now is a place of metanoia (conversion).” The connection he draws between our COVID context and conversion is particularly apt given an April 2021 report by the US National Intelligence Council. It warns that the pandemic will worsen the social and economic inequities that already mark the world community. The vaccine-richness of the Global North will underscore, by increasingly stark and glaring contrast, its privileged status and, we can hope, will provoke a new sense of responsibility for other regions of the world. In COVID, the world confronts a problem that, once again, transcends regional solutions.
Scroll to Top