Our greatly admired and valued Committee Member, Anthony O’Mahony, director of the Centre of Eastern Christianity at Heythrop College, University of London, has been appointed to the Sir Daniel and Countess Bernardine Murphy Donohue Chair of Eastern Catholic Theology at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome for 2018.
The closure of the Centre for Eastern Christianity with the demise of Heythrop is much to be mourned. Founded in 2010, it became a remarkable place of encounter between the Eastern Churches and Christians in the UK, in London as a world city, in an historic Catholic higher education institution, with the spheres of academic study, Church life and leadership, and the broader context of civil society, politics and diplomacy. Through the Centre, Anthony has brought people together from across the globe and given them a voice, or a channel that otherwise they would not have had, to be heard and understood not only in Church and academic settings but in places of influence and policy too. To the leaders of Christians whose ancient Churches have been and remain under severe threat across the Middle East (where a century ago they constituted as much as 25% of the population, now reduced to under 5%) the Centre led by Anthony has been a beacon of hope and encouragement.
The Centre has provided access to research in the Christian East’s history, life, religion and present situation for a numerous and impressive community of new scholarship, at its peak the largest body of research students in a single discipline in Heythrop’s recent history. It has thus drawn in a larger network of people in the wider Church, both Eastern Catholics and Orthodox now present and settled in the UK, and also interested and concerned clergy and people from the western Churches. The regular series of open courses, lectures, events and research showcases have been a remarkable example of the mutual engagement, support and animation, both intellectual and pastoral, that properly exists between Church and Academy. The Society is recognises the immense value the Centre for Eastern Christianity has brought, since its aims are very close to those for which the Society was founded in 1927. It is also proud to have played a small part to support the initiative over the last eight years, and hopes to continue to do so as the work takes on new forms and opportunities.
It is a magnificent, and richly deserved, tribute that in the Centre’s concluding term at Heythrop, the value and importance of the accumulated work and knowledge of its founder and director have been internationally recognised by the award of this prestigious Chair (previous Donohue Professors have included Metropolitan Kallistos and Archbishop Rowan Williams). The Chair also signifies the esteem in which the work, as its life at a Catholic university college in England ends, is held by the Universal Church at the principal Catholic institute for the study of Eastern Christianity in the service of the Bishop of Rome.
Professor O’Mahony’s inaugural lecture was given on the 11th May 2018, and it can be viewed here, at the POI’s YouTube channel:
Professor, Axios!