2022 Fall Event
Fertile Ground: Building a Synodal Church.
This year’s exciting event, Fertile Ground: Building a Synodal Church, will take place during two different virtual gatherings – on Thursday, November 3rd at 7pm ET and Thursday, November 10th, at ET 8:30pm (via Zoom).
Awards Presentation: Thursday, November 3 at 7pm ET
Sr. Maureen Sullivan, O.P., Ph.D.
Sr. Maureen Sullivan, OP is a Dominican Sister of Hope from New York and Professor Emerita of Theology at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire. She received her Master of Arts in Theology from Manhattan College in the Bronx and her Ph.D. in Theology from Fordham University, also in the Bronx. The Second Vatican Council, along with its impact on our Church, is at the center of her theological research. Sr. Maureen Sullivan recently lead a four-part series, for FutureChurch, exploring Vatican II documents as the foundation for the 2023 Synod. Videos to each of the presentations and PDFs of Sr. Maureen’s presentations can be found at https://futurechurch.org/fertile-ground. She has written two books on Vatican II: 101 Questions and Answers on Vatican II (2002) and The Road to Vatican II: Key Changes in Theology (2007).
Yunuen Trujillo
Yunuen Trujillo is a Catholic lay minister, a faith-based Community Organizer, and an Immigration Attorney. As a lay minister, she has served in Young Adult Ministry for more than 15 years and she is one of the leading figures for inclusive Catholic LGBT Ministry in the United States. Yunuen is a regular speaker at the yearly Los Angeles Religious Education Congress, a Congress that draws about 30,000+ attendants from all over the world, where she teaches about inclusive LGBT Ministry. As a community organizer, she has worked with L.A. Voice PICO, a faith-based, multi-faith, multi-racial organization that works to create a society that reflects the Dignity of all persons; working on issues such as immigrant rights, education, and criminal justice reform. Yunuen is also the founder of the Instagram @lgbtcatholics, an online platform of resources for Catholic LGBT Ministry, and she is the Religious Formation Coordinator (Sp) for the Catholic Ministry with Lesbian and Gay Persons of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. She is the author of the new book, LGBT Catholics: A Guide for Inclusive Ministry (Paulist Press, 2022).
Keynote Presentation: Thursday, November 10 at 8:30pm ET
Rafael Luciani, S.T.D.
Professor Rafael Luciani, S.T.D., a world renown expert on synodality in the Catholic Church, will offer his insights regarding the current efforts of Pope Francis to create a new phase in the reception of Vatican II — a church that “walks together” in discerning the future. Professor Luciani argues that what is at stake, is nothing less that the Church’s fidelity to her calling as a follower of Jesus and her response to the new signs of the times. He contends that synodality is a re-ordering of relationships within the church. In this new ecclesial “we”, all the faithful, from the pope to the laity, are equals in a communion with the same responsibility regarding the identity, vocation, and mission of the Church.
Professor Rafael Luciani is lay theologian from Venezuela who has been appointed as Expert of the Theological Commission of the General Secretariat for the Synod of Bishops. He holds degrees of Doctor in Theology and Licenciate in Dogmatic Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University of Rome; Baccalaureatum in Philosophy and Baccalaureatum in Theology from the Pontifical Salesian University of Rome; and Licenciate in Education (with mention in Philosophy) earned from the Jesuit`s Catholic University Andrés Bello in Caracas. He is an Associate Professor of the Practice at Boston College and is currently engaged in postdoctoral research activities at the Julius-Maximilians Universität in Würzburg, Germany. He is the author of Synodality: A New Way of Proceeding in the Church.
