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Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development
Dicasteries
Leadership
Cardinal Prefect, Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development (S.J.)
Michael Czerny
About Michael Czerny
Michael Felix Czerny, SJ, was born on 18 July 1946 in Brno, Czechoslovakia. His mother's family were Jewish converts to Catholicism; his maternal grandparents and uncles were interned in Terezín and Auschwitz during the Nazi occupation, and his mother was forced into labor before she and his father immigrated to Canada in 1948. Czerny graduated from Loyola High School in Montreal in 1963 and joined the Jesuits on 14 August 1964, studying classics and philosophy at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, and theology in Chicago and Toronto. He was ordained a priest on 9 June 1973 and earned his doctorate in interdisciplinary studies from the University of Chicago in 1978. He co-founded the Jesuit Centre for Social Faith and Justice in Toronto in 1979, then in 1990–1991 directed the Institute for Human Rights at the University of Central America in San Salvador following the murder of six Jesuits there. From 1992 to 2002 he worked in the Social Justice Secretariat at the Jesuit General Curia in Rome, and from 2002 to 2010 founded and directed the African Jesuit AIDS Network across nearly 30 Sub-Saharan African countries. He then served as personal assistant to Cardinal Peter Turkson at the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (2010–2016). Pope Francis appointed him Under-Secretary of the Migrants and Refugees Section of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development in December 2016. Pope Francis consecrated Czerny a bishop and created him a Cardinal-Deacon on 5 October 2019. In December 2021 he was named acting prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, and on 23 April 2022 was appointed to a five-year term as Prefect.
Mailing Address
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🇮🇹 Rome, Italy
Cardinal Prefect, Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development (S.J.)Michael Czerny
Via della Conciliazione, 3
00193 ROMA
ITALY
About
Promotes the human person and dignity, human rights, health, justice and peace. Primarily concerned with economy and work, care for creation, migration, and humanitarian emergencies.