July 2021 – Fr. Jim Corkery
Father Jim Corkery is an Irish Jesuit who taught systematic theology at the Milltown Institute of Theology and Philosophy in Dublin for more than twenty years. In the autumn of 2014, he moved to the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, where he is a Professor in the Departments of Fundamental and Dogmatic Theology and was also, until 2020, active in the St. Peter Favre Centre for Formators to the Priesthood and Religious Life. Among his current areas of research/writing are the following: contemporary approaches to the resurrection; the theologies of Joseph Ratzinger, Karl Rahner, Avery Dulles and Elizabeth Johnson; the social and cultural dimensions of grace; the interpretation of the Second Vatican Council; and the attempt to re-think the theology of salvation in the light of the clerical sexual abuse crisis. He is also interested in Jesuit spirituality and history and is one of the associate editors of The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Jesuits (2017). Other writings of his include Joseph Ratzinger’s Theological Ideas: Wise Cautions and Legitimate Hopes (2009) and, in 2010, a co-edited collection of essays with U.S. Jesuit, Thomas Worcester, entitled The Papacy Since 1500: From Italian Prince to Universal Pastor. In Rome, he has worked with the Centre for Child Protection (CCP), teaching for its Diploma in the Safeguarding of Minors and guiding two doctoral students attempting to combine theology and safeguarding in their dissertations. Arising from his activity with the Centre, he has published two articles: “Jesus and Children, Images of a Loving God” and “Toward an Understanding of Salvation that Could be ‘Salvific’ for Survivors of Sexual Abuse in the Church: An Exploration of the Notion of Representation in Joseph Ratzinger’s Soteriology” in: Karlijn Demasure, Katharina A. Fuchs and Hans Zollner (editors), Safeguarding: Reflecting on Child Abuse, Theology and Care (Leuven: Peeters, 2018, pp. 5-15 and 17-35 respectively). While he teaches at the Gregorian University he lives at the Collegio Internazionale del Gesù, a community that is home to more than fifty Jesuit theology students from all over the world.