NEWS ROUNDUP

“The last year has reminded us about the unity of Europe and about the human dignity, freedom, and democracy that lie at its core. We have learned that these values should never be taken for granted. The Nanovic Institute has collaborated with partners in Europe to help foster this unity and minimize internal divisions, exploring how solidarity, resilience, leadership, and religious commitments can be drivers of global social change for the common good.”

– Taras Dobko, Ukrainian Catholic University

BUILDING RESILIENCE INTO LEADERSHIP: ROME

In May 2022, the Nanovic Institute convened a select group of academic administrators of Catholic universities in Central and Eastern Europe to focus on building resilience into leadership. This unique program, funded by generous external grants, combined practical lectures and lessons with a spiritual retreat and Masses that took advantage of the location in Rome. Presenters included Fr. Friedrich Bechina, FSO, undersecretary for the Congregation for Catholic Education, David Buckley, a member of the Institute’s advisory board, and Carolyn Woo, who served as dean of Mendoza College of Business from 1997 to 2011. Participants from Ukraine opened the proceedings and were followed by sessions that provided practical support, encouragement, and an opportunity to reinforce networks. In the words of one participant from Ukraine: “This program was a real lifesaver for me. The war changed a lot in my work, in my relations with my colleagues, in my perception of my place in life and my family/community/country. At some point, after several weeks of working around the clock, I started to feel drained and devastated. This program and the people I met became a breath of fresh air for me. They became my support and belief that with joint efforts you can overcome everything and come out even stronger.”

ABOVE: Dr. Halyna Protsyk, director of international academic relations and a lecturer in the political science department at the Ukrainian Catholic University, presented at a session in Rome.

ABOVE: (Left to Right) Natalie Yakymets, Deputy Director for Research, Senior Lecturer of Philosophy, and Yaryna Boychuk, Director of the Business School, both from Ukrainian Catholic Univeristy.

RIGHT: Paul Perrin, Associate Professor of the Practice and Director of Evidence and Learning, Pulte Institute for Global Development, and Monica Caro, Senior Associate Director, Nanovic Institute. In May 2022, members of the Catholic Universities Partnership held their annual conference at SulkhanSaba Orbeliani University in Tbilisi, Georgia. “Resilience and Recovery: Challenges for Universities” was the first CUP conference to be hosted by the Georgian partner. The conference displayed the impressive achievement of establishing a new Catholic university in a country where only about one percent of the population is Catholic. Over the course of two days, participants discussed Catholic education in wartime, beginning with reflections on the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine and moving to post-war forgiveness and reconciliation in Croatia. The discussions involving the invasion were especially poignant not only because faculty members from the Ukrainian Catholic University were present, but also because of the physical proximity of the war (Ukraine is just across the Black Sea from Georgia), the many signs of solidarity with Ukraine visible on the streets of Tbilisi, and the fact that Georgia has itself suffered from Russian aggression and the occupation of part of its territory. These experiences were discussed by many at the conference, including former President of Georgia Giorgi Margvelashvili and the Most Reverend José Avelino Bettencourt ComC, OMRI, Apostolic Nuncio in Georgia and Armenia.

ABOVE: Vaja Vardidze, Rector of the Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani University; Jim McAdams, William M. Scholl Professor of International Affairs, University of Notre Dame; Fr. Akaki Chelidze, who begins his term as rector of Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani University in October 2022; and Michael Pippenger, Vice President and Associate Provost for Internationalization, University of Notre Dame.

New Collaborations: Diplomatic Academy of Vienna and Caritas Europe

This year, the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna (DA) helped elevate the Nanovic Institute’s Diplomacy Scholars program to the next level. Deputy Director of the DA and Austrian diplomat Dr. Susanne Keppler-Schlesinger spent a week on campus with the Diplomacy Scholars cohort, sharing valuable insights about the diplomatic way of life. Students then spent a day with Dr. Keppler-Schlesinger’s colleagues at the DA and the Austrian foreign ministry during a diplomacy immersion visit to Vienna in May 2022. The Institute forged a new connection with Caritas Europe in August 2021 to offer a unique service learning internship program. Three Caritas branches hosted Notre Dame students this past summer: Caritas Ambrosiana (Italy), Caritas Sofia (Bulgaria), and Caritas Armenia. The Institute looks forward to strengthening these partnerships going forward. In 2019, to mark the bestowal of the Notre Dame Award on Ukrainian Metropolitan-Archbishop and President of Ukrainian Catholic University Borys Gudziak, UCU and the Nanovic Institute co-convened a symposium titled “Faith and Freedom: Religions and Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe.” Since that time, the Faith and Freedom initiative has developed into a longer-term research collaboration between scholars within the Catholic Universities Partnership.

The current project seeks to explore the role of faith-based actors, especially the Catholic Church, in creating and sustaining economic, political, and religious freedoms in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989. Faith and Freedom asks questions about the role of religious faith in resisting the restrictions on freedoms through communist regimes, in shaping the transition from communism to a free market system, and in developing sustainable entrepreneurship in three post-communist countries. The research includes dozens of interviews, primarily conducted by students and scholars within the CUP, and a review of relevant literature and media analysis.

Undergraduate research assistants, including Garrett Pacholl ’24, have also had an opportunity to work on this project at the Nanovic Institute: “I worked as a student research assistant on the Faith and Freedom project to study the role of religion, primarily Catholicism, in democratic processes in post-Soviet Eastern Europe. I focused particularly on sources from Croatia, Georgia, Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine by reading firsthand accounts of those who experienced these events. The project helped widen my perspective when it came to the variety of sources I could use. I was reminded that religion is influential in both politics and the lives of everyday people and that we must understand the specific historical context of a region to fully appreciate the part played by religion or religious institutions in establishing and protecting democracy.” Anna Romandash, an award-winning journalist from Ukraine and a Master of Global Affairs student in the Keough School of Global Affairs, led a number of interviews as part of the Faith and Freedom project. In October 2021, she published an article that was based on one such interview: “Struggle and Revival: How Greek Catholics Re-emerged in Independent Ukraine.” Her subject, Sonya Hlutkowsky-Soutus, was the Greek Catholic Church’s first press officer, a position she held from 1988 to 1994. Hlutokowsky-Soutus was at the forefront of dramatic changes that swept Ukraine during the collapse of the USSR in 1989. The interview that inspired this story, and many others from the Faith and Freedom project, will ultimately live in an online repository to educate scholars and students interested in understanding the trauma of communism, and the role of the Church in Central and Eastern Europe in the years leading up to and following the collapse of the USSR.

ABOVE: University of Notre Dame President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C. with Ukrainian Catholic University President Archbishop Borys Gudziak on the UCU campus in Lviv, Ukraine in 2019.

LEFT: His Beatitude Myroslav Ivan Cardinal Liubachivskyi with Locum Tenens Archbishop Volodymyr Sterniuk, Lviv, 1991. Courtesy of the Institute of Church History, UCU.