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About Francis X. Clooney S.J.

Parkman Professor of Divinity
Professor of Comparative Theology
Catholic Theological Society of America President-Elect (2021-22)

Francis X. Clooney, S.J., joined the Harvard Divinity School faculty in 2005, where he is the Parkman Professor of Divinity and Professor of Comparative Theology. After earning his doctorate in South Asian languages and civilizations (University of Chicago, 1984), he taught at Boston College for 21 years before coming to Harvard. From 2010 to 2017, he was the Director of the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard.

His primary areas of Indological scholarship are theological commentarial writings in the Sanskrit and Tamil traditions of Hindu India. He is also a leading figure globally in the developing field of comparative theology, a discipline distinguished by attentiveness to the dynamics of theological learning deepened through the study of traditions other than one’s own. He has also written on the Jesuit missionary tradition, particularly in India, on the early Jesuit pan-Asian discourse on reincarnation, and on the dynamics of dialogue and interreligious learning in the contemporary world.

Clooney is the author of numerous articles and books, including Thinking Ritually: Retrieving the Purva Mimamsa of Jaimini (Vienna, 1990), Theology after Vedanta: An Experiment in Comparative Theology (State University of New York Press, 1993), Beyond Compare: St. Francis de Sales and Sri Vedanta Desika on Loving Surrender to God (Georgetown University Press, 2008), The Truth, the Way, the Life: Christian Commentary on the Three Holy Mantras of the Shrivaisnava Hindus (Peeters Publishing, 2008), Comparative Theology: Deep Learning across Religious Borders (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), and His Hiding Place Is Darkness: A Hindu-Catholic Theopoetics of Divine Absence (Stanford University Press, 2013).

Recent books include Reading the Hindu and Christian Classics: Why and How It Matters (University of Virgina Press, 2019) and Western Jesuit Scholars in India: Tracing Their Paths, Reassessing Their Goals (Brill, 2020). His translation of the Hindu theologian Ramanuja’s Manual of Daily Worship (Nityagrantham) appeared in the International Journal of Hindu Studies in 2020. He is currently beginning to write a memoir tentatively entitled, Priest and Scholar, Catholic and Hindu: A Love Story.

In July 2010 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy and has served as a Professorial Research Fellow at the Australian Catholic University. His most recent honorary doctorate was awarded in November 2019 by Regis College, University of Toronto. He will serve as President of the Catholic Theological Society of America from June 2022 to June 2023.

He is a Roman Catholic priest and has been a member of the Society of Jesus for 50 years. He serves regularly in a Catholic parish on weekends. From 2007 to 2016 he blogged regularly in the “In All Things” section of America magazine online; his current blog is The Inner Edge, where in 2021 he completed a series of 62 online homilies written during the year of church closures during the pandemic. A new blog series will begin this summer.

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Latest Blog Posts

God and the Rain

Twice at least I was in Madras (Chennai), south India, in the spring and summer, before the rains came. As was too often the case, the rains were delayed, and water supplies were dwindling. Water was being rationed; people who could afford it purchased smaller and larger quantities from private companies that brought in water from afar. The poor and even many in the middle class lined up with buckets, waiting for a city water truck to come by, to dole out a day’s supply. I lived both times in a Jesuit house, and we had our own water tank on the roof. But we were urged to save water –...

Sacred: in the World, in the Heart

More than 50 years ago, very early in my years as a Jesuit, I attended a conference on the international mission of the Society of Jesus. The keynote speaker, Fr Horatio de la Costa, SJ echoed a sentiment attributed to Jerónimo Nadal early in the Society’s history when he told the gathered Jesuits, “We must have hearts as large as the world.” The words ignited a new fire in me. Unexpectedly, they prompted me on a course that just two years later would find me in Kathmandu, Nepal, embarking on my first...

HDS Interview: as I became president of the Catholic Theological Society of America

I was elected Vice President of the Catholic Theological Society of America in 2019, and then, after being VP and then President-Elect, on June 12 I became President, an office I will hold until June 2023.

Mike Naughton, Senior Media Relations Coordinator at Harvard Divinity School, recently interviewed me about the position, its opportunities and challenges - you can read the interview here:...