Signs of Hope: Finding Jubilee in a Fractured World
May 1-2, 2025
(Chicago & livestream)
In his recent
Spes Non Confundit ("Hope does not disappoint," Romans 5:5), Pope Francis declares hope the central message of the 2025
Jubilee year. In this conference, we will look for signs of hope amid mounting global challenges that drive many to anxiety, cynicism, and despair.
Coming from a variety of disciplines, our speakers will discuss the following topics:
- Theologies, spiritualities, and practices of hope, from large-scale projects to everyday exemplars
- Structural barriers to hope
- How hope differs from optimism
- The interplay between hope and patience
- How those on the margins manage to practice hope even in the most hopeless of circumstances
Conference Speakers
David Buckley (University of Louisville—Louisville, KY, USA)
- Dylan Corbett (Hope Border Institute—El Paso, TX, USA) keynote speaker
- Min-Ah Cho (Georgetown University—Washington, DC, USA)
Debra Dean Murphy (West Virginia Wesleyan College—Buckhannon, WV, USA)
Yara González-Justiniano (Vanderbilt Divinity School—Nashville, TN, USA)
Emmanuel Katongole (University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and Keough School of Global Affairs—Notre Dame, IN, USA)
Léonard Katchekpele (Diocese of Speyer—Speyer, Germany | Catholic University of West Africa—Lomé, Togo)
Cesar Kuzma (Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná—Curitiba, Brazil)
Mwila Mulumbi (Catholic Agency for Overseas Development—London)
Vien V. Nguyen, SCJ (U.S. Province, Priests of the Sacred Heart—Hales Corners, WI, USA)
Elizabeth O'Donnell Gandolfo (Wake Forest University School of Divinity—Winston-Salem, NC, USA)
Atalia Omer (University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs—Notre Dame, IN, USA)
Antonio D. Sison, CPPS (Catholic Theological Union—Chicago, IL, USA)
Conference Organizers/Sponsors
Organized by DePaul University's Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology (CWCIT), World Catholicism Week is an annual event, now in its 16th year, that gathers scholars from around the world to explore a single topic. CWCIT is grateful to its conference cosponsors here at DePaul: