Cardinal Michael Czerny, S.J.

Doctor of Divinity

As a Jesuit priest for 50 years, Cardinal Michael Czerny S.J., has been an unflagging leader in the Catholic Church’s response to issues of social justice—from protecting human rights in Central America, to caring for people with HIV/AIDS in Africa, to working with migrants and refugees throughout the world.

Now, as Prefect of the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, he is also encouraging the Church’s fight against climate change and calling on individuals and institutions to become better caretakers of our common home. This effort is inspired by Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si’, and informed by environmental science and a deep understanding of migration patterns, social services, and global economics.

Cardinal Czerny’s own story begins as a refugee. He was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia, in 1946. His mother, a Catholic with Jewish ancestors, had survived the concentration camp at Terezin, and his father had endured forced labor during World War II; his maternal grandparents and two uncles died in concentration camps. In 1948, his parents immigrated to Canada with him and his baby brother Robert. The family settled in Montreal, where Michael graduated from Loyola High School in 1963 and later entered the Society of Jesus.

Ordained a priest in 1973, he earned a doctorate in interdisciplinary studies at the University of Chicago, and in 1979 co-founded the Jesuit Centre for Social Faith and Justice in Toronto. Ten years later, when six Jesuits and two women household staff were assassinated by soldiers during the civil war in El Salvador, Cardinal Czerny left Canada to replace one of the murdered priests. He directed the University of Central America’s Institute for Human Rights, cooperating with United Nations mediators to help bring an end to the country’s 12-year civil war. Then in 1992, he joined the Jesuit Curia in Rome as director of its worldwide focus on social justice and ecology.

In 2002, Cardinal Czerny founded the African Jesuit AIDS Network, which provides pastoral care, education, and health services for people with HIV/AIDS. Returning to Rome in 2010, he assisted the president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. In 2016, Pope Francis appointed him to a prominent role working with migrants, refugees, and victims of human trafficking. He elevated Czerny to cardinal in October 2019, and last year named him to lead the Vatican’s efforts to promote integral human development—or, as Cardinal Czerny has put it, the “flourishing of each and every person in the different dimensions of their existence.” That begins with the understanding that “everything and everyone is connected,” he has said. “A few of us cannot be happily or integrally developed if others of us are underdeveloped or mal-developed or simply totally left out.”

For his devotion to the Church, and his commitment to protecting our common home and safeguarding human dignity, we, the President and Trustees of Fordham University, in solemn convocation assembled and in accord with the chartered authority bestowed on us by the Regents of the University of the State of New York, declare Cardinal Michael Czerny Doctor of Divinity, honoris causa. That he may enjoy all rights and privileges of this, our highest honor, we have issued these letters patent under our hand and the corporate seal of the University on this, the 20th day of May in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand Twenty-Three.