Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Thomas Berry, CP

I received this information from the people at Loyola Institute for Ministry regarding Thomas Berry, CP.

We want to inform you of the death of Thomas Berry, CP, Ph.D., on June 1, 2009. Thomas died in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he was born 94 years ago, the third of thirteen children.

Thomas left a unique and rich legacy to those of us who follow him in time -- the sense of Creation as God's first and ultimate self-disclosure -- the need to remember that the first article of our Creed is belief in God, Creator of Heaven and Earth -- the reminder that the natural world evokes our earliest and deepest experience of beauty, intimacy, and imagination, those attributes which dispose us to the world of the sacred and distinguish us from other life forms.

Thomas received an honorary doctorate from Loyola in 1994. He responded to this in his customary, self-deflecting way, "I want to thank this University for being the first Catholic university to bestow such an honor on one whose primary commitment is the natural world."

Thomas returned to LIM and Loyola annually over the next ten years, offering workshops and lectures, all of which have been sent to the archive established at Harvard University to house his massive literary and video legacy.

His wisdom and presence suffuse our LIM/LIMEX curricula. And it was under his tutelage that the Religion and Ecology Focus Area was developed.

Thus we at Loyola and particularly the community of the Institute for Ministry are indebted to this scholar/teacher who identified himself as geologian, or student of Earth. May he rest in peace and may his work prosper through the creative efforts of those legions who bear his influence in their minds and hearts and carry it forward into the Great Work of the 21st century. www.thomasberry.org


On behalf to the Loyola Institute for Ministry,

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