Michael Czerny

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Michael F. Cardinal Czerny in front of the sculpture Angels Unawares .
Cardinal coat of arms by Michael Czerny

Michael F. Cardinal Czerny SJ (born July 18, 1946 in Brno , Czechoslovakia ) is a Canadian Roman Catholic Cardinal, member of the Jesuit Order . In Canada, Latin America, Africa and Rome he advocated the social doctrine of the Church and social justice. Since 2010 he has worked at the papal curia.

Life

During the Nazi era, his maternal grandmother died in Auschwitz, his mother Winifred Hayek Czerny was interned in the Theresienstadt concentration camp . Since his father Egon Czerny refused to separate from his wife when she was in Theresienstadt, he had to do forced labor in a camp in Postoloprty for the last eight months of the war .

In 1948 his parents emigrated to Canada with him as a toddler and their newborn brother. After graduating from Loyola High School in Montreal, he entered the Jesuit Order on August 14, 1964. He was ordained a priest on June 9, 1973 in what was then the Upper Canadian Province of the Jesuits (now the Canadian Province). In 1978 he received his doctorate from the University of Chicago with a dissertation on Ludwig Feuerbach and Karl Marx .

In 1979 Michael Czerny founded the Center for Faith and Social Justice in Toronto , of which he was director until 1989. He then became vice- rector of the Universidad Centroamericana “José Simeón Cañas” in San Salvador and director of the affiliated institute for human rights ( Instituto de Derechos Humanos - IDHUCA).

From 1992 to 2002, Czerny worked at the General Curia of the Jesuits in Rome as Secretary for Social Justice . In 2002 he founded the African Jesuit AIDS Network and headed it until 2010. During these eight years he initiated and coordinated the work of Jesuits and others in almost thirty countries in Sub-Saharan Africa in pastoral care, education, health services, and social and spiritual support and against the social stigmatization of victims of HIV / AIDS. During this time Michael Czerny also taught at the Hekima College of the Catholic University in Nairobi . In 2009 he referred to the experience that in Africa condoms for the prevention of HIV are mostly ineffective, despite their success "outside of Africa and with identifiable subgroups (for example prostitutes or gay men)".

From 2010 to 2016 he worked in Rome in the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace as personal assistant to Cardinal Peter Turkson . 2015 pointed out that the “limitations and fragmentations” of the church structure in the Amazon region make it difficult for the church to stand up for the rights of indigenous peoples and the preservation of creation . This fragmentation is to be overcome by the Amazon network Red Eclesial Panamazónica (REPAM) founded in 2014 .

On December 14, 2016, Pope Francis appointed him, with effect from January 1, 2017, as Undersecretary of the Department for Migrants and Refugees of the Dicastery for Integral Human Development . It was named along with Fabio Baggio .

In 2016, he commissioned Timothy Schmalz to create the sculpture Angels Unawares , which shows a boat with migrants and refugees wearing clothes that identify them with a variety of cultures and time periods. It was inaugurated in St. Peter's Square in the Vatican in 2019 .

Pope Francis appointed him a voting member of the 2018 Rome Synod of Bishops on Youth, Faith and Vocational Distinction. In October 2018, he stated that the rhetoric used to describe migration and refugee movements was misleading.

On May 4, 2019, Pope Francis appointed him as one of two special secretaries for the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon, which will meet in October 2019. In the press conference that presented the final document of the Synod, he said that the Church must learn to respect cultural differences: “Not to assume that the way I walk or how we walk it is definitive is the norm and that Way as it should be. Differences have to be recognized. "

On September 1, 2019, Pope Francis announced that he would be accepted into the college of cardinals as a cardinal deacon in the consistory of October 5, 2019 . In the same month he was named titular archbishop pro hac vice of Beneventum . The Pope personally donated his episcopal ordination the day before the cardinal was created. Co-consecrators were Cardinal State Secretary Pietro Parolin and the Cardinal Prefect of the Dicastery for Integral Human Development, Peter Turkson . When the cardinal was created, the Pope assigned him the title diaconia of San Michele Arcangelo a Pietralata on October 5, 2019 . The occupation of his title diakonia took place on January 19 of the following year. His coat of arms consists of a green meadow reminiscent of Pope Francis ' encyclical Laudato si' , a golden boat with a refugee family of four, the seal of the Society of Jesus and the word "suscipe". The pectoral by the Italian artist Domenico Pellegrino consists of the remains of a boat that migrants use to cross the Mediterranean and reach the Italian island of Lampedusa .

On February 21, 2020, Pope Francis appointed him a member of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples and on July 8 of the same year a member of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue .

Fonts

  • Feuerbach the teacher and Marx the prophet. An introduction to religion . Thesis (Ph. D.), University of Chicago 1978.

Web links

Commons : Michael Czerny  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cardinal Czerny: My family during World War II - Vatican News ( en ) December 7, 2019. Retrieved January 26, 2020.
  2. ^ Mickey Conlon: Cardinal Czerny's courageous past remembered in El Salvador . In: Crux , November 3, 2019. Retrieved January 25, 2020. 
  3. ^ Nomina di Sotto-Segretari del Dicastero per il Servizio dello Sviluppo Umano Integrale. In: Daily Bulletin. Holy See Press Office , December 14, 2016, accessed December 14, 2016 (Italian).
  4. ↑ Megan Williams: Canadian artist's bronze statue depicting plight of refugees in boat unveiled at St. Peter's Square in Rome . In: CBC , September 29, 2019. Retrieved January 26, 2020. 
  5. ↑ Annuncio di Concistoro il 5 ottobre per la creazione di nuovi Cardinali. In: Daily Bulletin. Holy See Press Office, September 1, 2019, accessed September 1, 2019 (Italian).
  6. ↑ ordinazione Episcopale conferita dal Santo Padre Francesco. In: Daily Bulletin. Holy See Press Office, October 4, 2019, accessed October 5, 2019 (Italian).
  7. ↑ Concistoro Ordinario Pubblico: Assegnazione dei Titoli. In: Daily Bulletin. Holy See Press Office, October 5, 2019, accessed October 5, 2019 (Italian).
  8. ^ A migrant's cross for a new Jesuit cardinal ( en ) October 4, 2019. Retrieved January 26, 2020.
  9. ^ Nomina di Membri dei Dicasteri della Curia Romana. In: Daily Bulletin. Holy See Press Office, February 21, 2020, accessed February 21, 2020 (Italian).
  10. ^ Nomina di Membri del Pontificio Consiglio per il Dialogo Interreligioso. In: Daily Bulletin. Holy See Press Office, July 8, 2020, accessed July 8, 2020 (Italian).
personal data
SURNAME Czerny, Michael
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Czerny, Michael F.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech Roman Catholic religious and cardinal to the Curia
DATE OF BIRTH July 18, 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH Brno