Distinguished Speaker Series

Sister Adele O’Sullivan, CSJ, M.D. has been a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet since 1968. Her calling led her to pursue a medical career and in 1984 she received a Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Arizona. Dr. O’Sullivan completed her internship and residency in Family Medicine at the U of A in 1987 and is board certified by the American Board of Family Medicine. In 2006, Dr. O’Sullivan was honored as the American Family Physician of the Year by the American Academy of Family Physicians. She received the Arizona award as Family Physician of the Year from the Arizona Academy of Family Physicians in 2005.

Paul Rusesabagina was never the most idealistic man. As manager of the Belgian-owned Mille Collines, a luxury hotel in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, he knew when to slip a bottle of Scotch to corrupt colonels to keep them in his pocket. Those street smarts became his salvation when Rwanda plummeted into genocide ten years ago in an event that transformed the genial businessman into an unlikely hero. As ethnic Hutus began killing their Tutsi neighbors, Rusesabagina—a Hutu married to a Tutsi woman—turned his hotel into an impromptu refugee camp for more than a thousand terrified Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Deserted by international peacekeepers, Rusesabagina began cashing in every favor he had ever earned, bribing the Rwandan Hutu soldiers and keeping the bloodthirsty militia (mostly) outside the gates during the hundred days of slaughter. In the end, he survived along with his wife and three children, as did most of the refugees he sheltered. Now his heroic story is recounted in Hotel Rwanda, a gripping account of a genocide that claimed an estimated 800,000 lives, mainly Tutsis but also many moderate Hutus. Mr. Rusesabagina visited St. Ignatius in the Fall of 2005.

Monday March 5th, Paul Lammermeir and a one of his Peruvian students gave a presentation in St. Mary’s Chapel throughout the day. His talk encompassed his mission in Perú with his 3 homes that are modeled after Boys Hope/ Girls Hope. Taken from the Paul Lammermeier Foundation website is the Mission Statement: To solidify and expand the manifestation of Paul Lammermeier’s life work, which is consistent with the teachings of Jesus Christ and the Jesuit ideal of service to others, by providing homes in Lima, Peru for homeless children. The foundation provides safe, value-centered, and loving homes for impoverished children. These children, who typically begin the program around the age of 13, are given food, clothing, education, tutoring, medical care, and extracurricular activities. By creating an environment in which we nurture the minds and spirits of these Peruvian youth it is our hope to provide the educational background necessary for these children to break the cycle of poverty. This includes the needed support and guidance for these children to work towards university education.

Francis Piol Bol Bok (born February 1979), a Dinka tribesman and native of South Sudan, was a slave for ten years but is now an abolitionist and author living in the United States. On May 15, 1986, he was captured and enslaved at age seven during an Arab militia raid on the village of Nymlal in South Sudan during the Second Sudanese Civil War.[1] Bok lived in bondage for ten years before escaping imprisonment in Kurdufan, Sudan, followed by a journey to the United States by way of Cairo, Egypt.[1][2] Bok was aided by people of diverse cultures and faiths in his journey to freedom. His earliest steps towards the United States were helped by a Northern Sudanese Muslim family that believed that slavery was wrong and provided him a bus ticket to Khartoum.[3] Upon arriving in Khartoum, Bok was aided by fellow Dinka tribesman and members of the Fur people, and his trip to the United States was paid for by members of the Lutheran church. His first point of contact in the United States was a refugee from Somalia who helped him get settled in Fargo, North Dakota.[4][5]“

Sister Helen and Dead Man Walking have been the subject of numerous media stories and reviews in the U.S., Canada, Spain, Holland, England, Scotland, France and Australia. She has been featured in the New York Times Magazine, Vogue, Good Housekeeping, the St. Anthony Messenger, the Ligourian, the Chicago Tribune, the Atlanta Constitution, the Times Picayune, the San Francisco Chronicle, the New Orleans Magazine, the Tablet, Sisters Today and numerous other print media. Sr. Helen visited with St. Ignatius students in the Fall of 2004.

Eliezer “Elie” Wiesel KBE (English pronunciation: /ˈɛli vɨˈzɛl/; born September 30, 1928)[1] is a Romanian-born Jewish-American[1] writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He is the author of 57 books, including Night, a work based on his experiences as a prisoner in the Auschwitz, Buna, and Buchenwald concentration camps.[2] Wiesel is also the Advisory Board chairman of the Algemeiner Journal newspaper. When Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, the Norwegian Nobel Committee called him a “messenger to mankind”, stating that through his struggle to come to terms with “his own personal experience of total humiliation and of the utter contempt for humanity shown in Hitler’s death camps”, as well as his “practical work in the cause of peace”, Wiesel had delivered a powerful message “of peace, atonement and human dignity” to humanity.[3] Wiesel visited the St. Ignatius campus in 2007.

From his website (http://www.carlowolff.com/): Carlo Wolff writes for numerous publications including The Boston Globe, the Chicago Sun Times, the St. Petersburg Times, International Watch, HotelNewsNow.com and Asian Hospitality. He specializes in music criticism, book reviews, and feature articles about popular culture, travel, watches, and business. He was Features Editor of LH-Lodging Hospitality magazine from 1990 to 2008. The author of Cleveland Rock & Roll Memories, he lives in South Euclid, Ohio. From Wikipedia: Carlo Wolff is a prolific freelance journalist who writes for publications including the Boston Globe, the Chicago Sun Times, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the The Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio) and the Christian Science Monitor. He specializes in music criticism, book reviews and feature articles about popular culture, travel, and business. He also specializes in reviewing graphic novels for the Globe.[1] Included among his former outlets: Goldmine and Billboard. From February 1990 to August 2008, Wolff worked for Lodging Hospitality,[2] a Penton Media trade publication targeting the hotel industry. During his last eight years with LH, he was Features Editor. He now freelances to that publication and other trade periodicals. Wolff also maintains a blog.[3] Wolff has been involved in three books, including The Encyclopedia of Record Producers, a 1999 Billboard publication instigated by Eric Olsen, founder of www.blogcritics.com, a critical portal to which Wolff occasionally contributes. Wolff’s most recent book, Cleveland Rock and Roll Memories, was published in November 2006 by Gray and Company, Publishers.[4] Mr. Wolff visited St. Ignatius in the fall of 2011.