Millennial writer Meghan Clark has been appointed to the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.
NCR writes:
Pope Leo XIV has named a trio of Catholic academics and the head of a church-based center for migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border to be among the new members of the Vatican’s office on Catholic social doctrine.
The Vatican announced the pope’s new appointments to the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development on March 30. The office, led by Cardinal Michael Czerny, is devoted to the social teachings of the church, including on justice and peace, human rights, migration and the environment.
Among the 11 new members are Holy Cross Fr. Daniel Groody, vice president and an associate provost for undergraduate education at the University of Notre Dame; Meghan Clark, a theologian and assistant chair of the Department of Theology and Religious Studies of St. John’s University in New York; Léocadie Wabo Lushombo, a professor of ethical theology at the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University in Berkeley; and Dylan Corbett, executive director of the Hope Border Institute in El Paso, Texas….
In 2022, Clark worked with the human development dicastery’s migrant and refugee section on a project where theologians around the globe documented voices from the peripheries to inform the 2021-2024 synod on synodality. For her contribution, she interviewed day laborers and waste collectors as well as migrants and survivors of trafficking.
“I’m really excited to have the opportunity to serve this particular dicastery … and the ways in which they disseminate and promote the social teachings of the church and support the local church in doing so, as well, in practice,” she said.
For Clark, the appointment is a chance to continue working in areas that she has focused on in the past.
“My goal is to be of service to the people of God. What I hope I am able to do is the same thing I have done — to lift up the voices of those living, to use Pope Francis’ language, on the periphery so that not just their basic needs are met, but that they are heard and taken seriously,” said Clark, a parishioner of St. Rose of Lima Church in Rockaway Beach….
Her grandparents, John and Carol Clark, and her parents, Charles and Lisa Clark, had a profound influence on her life and her work, she said. The family regularly volunteered at food pantries and worked on social justice issues.
“I was brought up in a family where the expectation was modeled for me by my grandparents and parents and that was that our faith should touch every aspect of our lives. This isn’t something you do just on Sundays. You practice what you preach in a real sense,” she explained.
Millennial 