Last year, “The Way Forward” gathering at the University of San Diego focused on Laudato Si’. Among the attendees were Aruni Bhatnagar and Ted Smith from the Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute at the University of Louisville, and they expressed the desire to look for ways to collaborate with Catholic universities in the future. Our friends at America Media made a short video about the San Diego gathering.
Last Friday (April 11), representatives from Boston College, Fordham University, Loyola University Chicago and Sacred Heart University — the four schools that sponsor The Way Forward — met with Bhatnagar and Smith in Louisville to explore areas for future collaboration. We were joined by representatives from the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities and the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities.
Full disclosure: I am a fellow at Sacred Heart’s Center for Catholic Studies and am one of the organizers of The Way Forward gatherings. But, for this Louisville gathering, I was the border collie, nothing more. I made sure everyone got to the welcome dinner at Doc Crow’s, known for its great southern food.
The next morning, the group walked over to the beautiful Cathedral of the Assumption, where Louisville Archbishop Shelton Fabre led us in a Mass. We were only a dozen people, so we celebrated Mass in the intimate crypt chapel, and the archbishop brought us upstairs afterward to see the historic 1852 main sanctuary. We also saw the new micro-forest the Envirome Institute is building across the street from the cathedral.
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With thanks to the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) and Giovanna Dell’orto, where this article originally appeared.
