Plenary Speaker Fr. John Dear, SJ – Tuesday, May 22, 2012

John Dear is an internationally known voice for peace and nonviolence. A Jesuit priest, he is the author/editor of 25 books, including his autobiography, A Persistent Peace (Loyola Press, 2008).  In 2008, John was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.  From 1998 until December 2000, he served as the executive director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the largest interfaith peace organization in the United States. After the September 11th, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, John served as a Red Cross Chaplain, and became one of the coordinators of the chaplain program at the Family Assistance Center. He worked with some 1,500 family members who lost loved ones, as well as hundreds of firefighters and police officers, while at the same time, he spoke out against the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan.  From 2002-2004, he served as pastor of several parishes in northeastern New Mexico. He co-founded Pax Christi New Mexico and works on a nonviolent campaign to disarm Los Alamos. These days, he lectures and also writes a weekly column for the “National Catholic Reporter”.  John’s peacework has taken him to El Salvador, where he lived and worked in a refugee camp in 1985; to Guatemala, Nicaragua, Haiti, the Middle East, Colombia, and the Philippines; to Northern Ireland where he lived and worked at a human rights center for a year; and to Iraq, where he led a delegation of Nobel Peace Prize winners to witness the effects of the deadly sanctions on Iraqi children. He has run a shelter for the homeless in Washington, DC; taught theology at Fordham University; and served as Executive Director of the Sacred Heart Center, a community center for disenfranchised women and children in Richmond, Virginia.