(ILEAD Lecture Event) Speaking Frankly About Francis

Professor Harvey Cox, who teaches Religion and Culture at Harvard, is a Rome “insider.” He has taught on numerous occasions in the Eternal City, both at the Waldensian (Protestant) Seminary and at the Jesuit Gregorian University. He has also led study groups there for thirty years. Last year’s was a Harvard trip called An Insider’s Visit to Rome. One that occasion he met Pope Francis and later published his impressions in The Nation. Francis is the fourth pope Harvey has met, and, drawing on his experience of teaching and research in Latin America, he has done extensive research on the present pontiff ’s previous career in Argentina. This lecture will be focused on Pope Francis’ ambitious plans and the severe obstacles he will meet.

Harvey Cox is Hollis Research Professor of Divinity at Harvard, where he began teaching in 1965, both at Harvard Divinity School and in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. An American Baptist minister, he was the Protestant chaplain at Temple University and the director of religious activities at Oberlin College, an ecumenical fraternal worker in Berlin, and a professor at Andover Newton Theological School. He has been a visiting professor at Brandeis University, Seminario Bautista de Mexico, the Naropa Institute, and the University of Michigan. A prolific author, his most recent book is The Future of Faith (HarperCollins, 2009).