Talk focusing on overcoming negative effects of immigration presented at conference highlighting poverty and development issues raised by His Holiness, Pope Francis

Immigration expert Rev. Richard Ryscavage, S.J., will join a prominent list of distinguished authorities and professionals speaking at the international conference "Poverty and Development: A Catholic Perspective" later this month in New York City.

Father Ryscavage, S.J., Director of Fairfield University's Center for Faith and Public Life and a member of the U.S. Government's Interagency Task Force on Unaccompanied Children , will speak at 9:15 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 27 2014 , at the E. Gerald Corrigan Conference Center (12th Floor, Lounge 113) at Fordham University's Lincoln Center Campus. His talk is entitled "Immigration: Overcoming its Negative Effects and Maximizing Its Positive Influence on the Communities of Origin, Transit and Destination." Lincoln Center Campus is located at West 60th Street (Corner of 60th Street and Columbus Ave.), New York, NY

Highlighting poverty and development issues raised by His Holiness, Pope Francis, the "Poverty and Development" conference is co-sponsored by CAPP-USA and Fordham University's Graduate Program in International Political Economy and Development. Other participants include Rev. Joseph M. McShane, S.J., President, Fordham University; Mr. Domingo Surgranyes Bickel, President, Fondazione Centesimus Annus Pro Pontifice; Archbishop Silvano Maria Tomasi, C.S., Nuncio to UN Organizations in Geneva; His Eminence, Theodore Cardinal McCarrick , Archbishop Emeritus, Archdiocese of Washington; General Roméo Dallaire , Founder of The Roméo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative; His Eminence, Chibly Cardinal Langlois , Bishop of Les Cayes (Haiti); Metropolitan Jean Clément Jeanbart , Archbishop of Aleppo (Syria); and Cardinal Pietro Parolin , Secretary of State, Holy See.

Rev. Richard Ryscavage, S.J., is a Fairfield University Professor of Sociology and Anthropology. As Director of Fairfield University's Center for Faith and Public Life, he oversaw two grant-funded initiatives that relate to different aspects of the immigration issue: the "Immigrant Student National Position Paper" focusing on undocumented students and "Strangers as Neighbors: Religious Language and the Response to Immigrants in the U.S."

He has served as national director of the Jesuit Refugee Service. While he was executive director of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Office of Migration and Refugee Services, he ran one of the world's largest refugee resettlement agencies where he oversaw annual federal grants of more than $40 million from the State Department and the Department of Health and Human Services. Fr. Ryscavage was president of CLINIC, the Catholic Legal Immigration Network. He chaired the humanitarian section of INTERACTION, the largest coalition of American non-governmental organizations working internationally. He was the first Arrupe Tutor at the Refugee Studies Centre of Oxford University in England. In 2006, he was invited by the Vatican to become a member of the official delegation of the Holy See to the 61st session of the UN General Assembly and participated in the Secretary General's "High Level Dialogue on Migration." Most recently, Fr. Ryscavage met with Pope Francis in the Vatican where he expressed his particular concern about young migrants around the world.

Posted On: 09-17-2014 03:09 PM

Volume: 47 Number: 55