Report: administration of Pontifical Oriental Institute dismissed

April 21, 2015

The superior general of the Society of Jesus has dismissed the rector, vice-rector, and two deans of the Pontifical Oriental Institute, according to a report by Italian journalist Sandro Magister.

Father James McCann, an American Jesuit who was appointed rector in 2010, is still listed as the rector on the website of the Institute, long a center of scholarship on Eastern Christianity. His interim replacement, according to the report, is Father Samir Khalil Samir, an Egyptian Jesuit and subject of a book-length interview on Islam published by Ignatius Press.

Magister charged that the Institute, founded in 1917 and subsequently entrusted to the Society of Jesus, has fallen on hard times in recent years, with instruction entrusted “to a ragtag group of professors on temporary leave from other universities who are reduced to doing in a few weeks what should last a whole semester, all to the detriment of the students.”

 

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Further information:

• Earthquake among the Jesuits, at the Pontifical Oriental Institute (L’Espresso)
• Pontifical Oriental Institute