10th Annual Collinge Lecture will center on St. John Neumann

Dr. Charles Strauss, Associate Professor of History at Mount St. Mary’s University, will deliver “ʻThe Church as Field Hospital’: St. John Neumann, St. Francis Xavier Parish, and Catholic Social Teaching” as the tenth annual William K. Collinge Lecture. The lecture will take place on Monday, June 20, at 7 p.m., in the Multi-Purpose Room at Xavier Center.

The lecture will apply Pope Francis’s metaphor of the church as field hospital to the life and ministry of St. John Neumann, an immigrant from Bohemia, who as Bishop of Philadelphia laid the cornerstone of the current St. Francis Church on June 20, 1852, exactly 170 years before the date of the lecture, and returned a year later to dedicate the church. This talk will examine Neumann’s work with the infirm, immigrants, and students as a way to examine the social goals of the Catholic Church in the 19th century.

The Collinge Lecture, an annual event jointly sponsored by the Interfaith Center for Peace and Justice and the St. Francis Xavier Church Social Welfare and Justice Committee, honors William K. Collinge, who left significant bequests to St. Francis Xavier Church and ICPJ. Admission is free.