Theologian Rafael Luciani honored
Clough School of Theology and Ministry Associate Professor of the Practice and Professor Extraordinarius Rafael Luciani was awarded an honorary doctorate in theology last month from Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis, Missouri, where he delivered the Commencement address.
An internationally respected theologian with 25 years of teaching and research experience, Luciani serves as a peritus (expert) to the Theological Commission of the General Secretariat for the Synod of Bishops and has been appointed peritus to the XVI General Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, which will end its second phase by the end of the year and will start its third and last phase next year. He is the author of the books Synodality: A New Way of Proceeding in the Church and Pope Francis and the Theology of the People, some 15 monographs in several languages, and more than 100 scholarly articles.
Rafael Luciani (center) with his Doctor Honoris Causa at Aquinas Institute of Theology Commencement on May 10.
A native of Venezuela, he serves as a theological peritus to CELAM (the bishops council of Latin America and the Caribbean) and a member of its Theological and Pastoral Commission. He is a member of the Theological Advisory Team of CLAR (Latin American Confederation of Religious men and women). In addition, he is a professor ordinarius at Andrés Bello Catholic University in Caracas, Venezuela, where he collaborated with Arturo Sosa, S.J., superior general of the Society of Jesus, and other Venezuelan Jesuits to expand the Faculty of Theology.
Founded by the Dominican Order in 1925, Aquinas Institute of Theology is a Catholic graduate school of theology and ministry. At Commencement, Aquinas Institute of Theology President Mark Wedig, O.P., said, “What we see in Dr. Luciani is his extraordinary leadership as a lay theologian who assists the church hierarchy to think theologically and his important contribution to the ecclesiology of synodality. Building on the ecclesiology of Lumen gentium and Gaudium et spes, Rafael Luciani voices a call for a new way of being Church focusing on a reconfiguration in the relations, communicative dynamics and structures of the institution itself.”
Luciani told the Spanish language religious media outlet Vida Nueva: “For me, theology is both a vocation and a ministry, and I believe that recovering [synodality] is essential, since it reflects the practice of the first centuries of Christianity and teaches us to work in networks and in synergy.”
Previous recipients of honorary degrees from Aquinas include BC Professor of Theology Emerita M. Shawn Copeland and renowned theologian Fr. Joseph Komonchak, an expert in Vatican II.