Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

University Appoints New VP for Mission and Ministry

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY Rev. Mark Bosco, S.J., director of catholic research center The Joan and Bill Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage at Loyola University Chicago, will serve as the university's vice president of mission and ministry starting Aug. 1.
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
Rev. Mark Bosco, S.J., director of catholic research center The Joan and Bill Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage at Loyola University Chicago, will serve as the university’s vice president of mission and ministry starting Aug. 1.

Reverend Mark Bosco, S.J., a professor of theology and English at Loyola University Chicago, will serve as the new vice president for mission and ministry starting Aug. 1.

Currently, Bosco serves as director of The Joan and Bill Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage at LUC, where he is responsible for developing symposia, lectures and research on Catholicism.

Bosco, who will also serve as a professorial lecturer in the English department in his new role, brings a history of scholarship to the position. Bosco has authored three books and about 20 articles on the relationship between theology and art.

In an interview with The Hoya, Bosco said he is looking to engage the community in a conversation on Georgetown’s Jesuit identity in his new position.

As vice president for mission and ministry, Bosco will oversee the Office of Campus Ministry, which is responsible for Roman Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Orthodox Christian, Hindu and Buddhist worship services and includes the Hindu, Muslim and Jewish chaplaincies.

“I’m excited to celebrate the liturgy for students as often as I can, something I’ve always gotten great joy out of,” Bosco said. “I’d like to deepen the conversation about what Jesuit Catholic education means, whether to faculty and staff or to students.”

In a campuswide email yesterday, University President John J. DeGioia said Bosco embodies the university’s Jesuit identity.

“Fr. Bosco will bring to our University an extraordinary understanding of our Catholic and Jesuit tradition and the way it influences and strengthens all that we do,” DeGioia wrote. “Fr. Bosco also shares our University’s commitment to advancing interfaith and ecumenical dialogue and understanding, and will work with colleagues in our Office of Mission and Ministry to further animate our efforts to help our students live lives of deep meaning and purpose.”

Bosco taught at the University of San Francisco and the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, after earning his Masters in Divinity from the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley.

Bosco will replace interim Vice President Fr. Howard Gray, S.J., who has served in the role since former

Vice President of Mission and Ministry Fr. Kevin O’Brien, S.J., (CAS ’88) left the university to serve as the dean of the Jesuit School of Theology last August.

Gray said Bosco will bring a depth of experience to the new position.

“Georgetown is fortunate to have Mark Bosco as the new Vice President, a Jesuit of many talents, wide experience, and proved commitment to Jesuit higher education,” Gray wrote in an email to The Hoya.
Government professor Fr. Matthew Carnes, S.J., who served on the search committee that selected Bosco, said Bosco will bring innovation to the Georgetown community.

“I’m delighted by Fr. Bosco’s appointment. He conveys a marvelous sense of welcome and hospitality, and loves to cook, so I think there will be many opportunities for members of the community -— students, faculty, and staff -— to get to know him in close, personal ways,” Carnes wrote in an email to The Hoya. “His academic background in poetry, aesthetics, and theology, and his deep grounding in spirituality, will be a real gift to Georgetown, and they promise to help us move in new directions in the ways we live out Mission and Ministry.”

In his role as director of the Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage at Loyola, Bosco said he focused on cultivating interfaith dialogue, which he hopes to continue at Georgetown.

“For the last four years we’ve done a successful afternoon symposium on trying to bring faith traditions together. We always invited students to be part of it, and I really liked that part the best,” Bosco said. “It usually brought other students in because students like to hear what their friends are doing, but it also was a witness to what’s going on on campus.”

Bosco said he looks forward to becoming a part of the Georgetown community and strengthening the university’s Jesuit traditions.

“Mostly I’m looking forward to getting to know people there and to see what’s out there and to see how I can contribute,” Bosco said. “I’d like to talk more about and celebrate Ignatian pedagogy — which I know is going on at Georgetown — and see if we can just articulate that.”

Hoya Staff Writer Hannah Urtz contributed reporting

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