SJU Commencement activities May 13

Bob Abernethy, executive editor and host of Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, will deliver the commencement address at Saint John's University at 2 p.m. Sunday, May 13, in the Saint John's Abbey Church, Collegeville, Minn. This year’s commencement ceremony at Saint John’s celebrates the 150th anniversary of its founding in 1857.

Abernethy will receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree, while Ambassador John W. McDonald, co-founder and chairman of the Institute for Multi-track Diplomacy and distinguished visiting professor at George Mason University, will receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree.

Also during the commencement ceremony, Saint John’s Abbey and University will present its Pax Christi Award to the Most Rev. Michael L. Fitzgerald, archbishop, apostolic nuncio in Egypt and delegate to the League of Arab States. 

Paul Storm, a political science major from Fargo, N.D., will be the student commencement speaker, as selected by this year's SJU senior class.

The 2007 Saint John’s graduating class includes 443 undergraduate men, the second highest in school history, and 29 School of Theology Seminary graduates. When combined with the College of Saint Benedict’s 469 graduates, this year’s combined undergraduate graduating class is 912.

A veteran television correspondent with a longtime personal interest in religion, Abernethy developed and created the show Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly in response to widespread criticism of American television’s lack of attention to religious news. Now in its 10th season, with Abernethy as executive editor and host, this half-hour newsmagazine has been widely praised by critics and has won numerous awards for its thoughtful public exploration of religion, ethics and spirituality in American life. It airs on more than 250 public stations nationwide. Before launching Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, Abernethy served as a correspondent for NBC News for more than four decades, reporting from across the nation and around the world, including Moscow, where he covered the end of the Cold War and the collapse of communism and the Soviet Union.

McDonald is a lawyer, diplomat, former international civil servant, development expert and peacebuilder. He spent 20 years in Western Europe and the Middle East and worked for 16 years on United Nations economic and social affairs. He was appointed ambassador twice each by Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan to represent the United States at various U.N. World Conferences and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994. He is currently chairman and co-founder of the Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy in Washington D.C., which focuses on national and international ethnic conflicts. In February 1992, he was named distinguished visiting professor at George Mason University's Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, in Fairfax, Va.

British-born Archbishop Fitzgerald, widely considered the best informed and most capable scholar working on Christian-Islamic relations in the senior leadership of the Catholic Church today, is currently apostolic nuncio to the Arab Republic of Egypt and delegate to the organization of the League of Arab States for the Vatican. Prior to these appointments, he was secretary and later president of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue from 1986-2006. In these positions, he made significant strides in promoting good relationships between the Roman Catholic Church and the world’s other faiths, particularly Islam.

As the highest honor awarded by Saint John’s, the Pax Christi Award recognizes those who have devoted themselves to God by working in the tradition of Benedictine monasticism to serve others and to build a heritage of faith in the world. The award has been presented to 52 individuals. Past recipients include the late Cardinal Leo Jozef Suenens of Belgium; the former representative of the Holy See in the United States, Archbishop Jean Jadot; the late former senator and presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy; the late Archbishop John Roach of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis; Mary Jo Copeland, founder and director of Minneapolis’ Sharing and Caring Hands; Amy Grant, a contemporary Christian singer; and the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of the Chicago Archdiocese.