FAITH FORMATION SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS/EVENTS
JUSTICE, PEACE, AND INTEGRITY OF CREATION (JPIC)
Triannual (tertial): Tentative Dates
FALLTuesday,10/28/25
7-8:30 pm, Youth Ministry Room 2222 (Immaculata School) |
WINTERThursday, 02/26/26
7-8:30 pm, San Damiano 2 |
SPRINGThursday, 04/23/26
7-8:30 pm, San Damiano 2 |
If you have any questions about our JPIC faith formation special presentations/events, please contact:
Ken Chiha, Director of Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation (JPIC)
Ken Chiha, Director of Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation (JPIC)
Please visit our main JPIC webpage for information on all our other JPIC Catholic social teaching faith formation ministries, programs, and events.
PREVIOUS PRESENTATIONS
TOGETHER IN FAITH & HOPE:
STRATEGIES TO PREVENT OVERDOSE
Saturday, June 28, 2025 | 12:30-5 pm
Human Services Building (414 East Main Street, Durham)
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"STRANGERS NO LONGER:" CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING ON IMMIGRANTS, REFUGEES, & ASYLUM SEEKERS
SPRING 2025 JPIC FAITH FORMATION PRESENTATION
Monday, May 05, 2025 | 7-8:30 pm, San Damiano 2
Light refreshments will be provided
The immigrant who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; "You shall love the foreigner as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God." - Leviticus 19:34
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) reminds us that “Catholic Church in the United States is an immigrant Church with a long history of embracing diverse newcomers and providing assistance and pastoral care to immigrants, migrants, refugees, and people on the move.”
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On Monday, May 05, 7-8:30 pm, in San Damiano 2, Ken Chiha, Director of Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation (JPIC) will offer our Spring JPIC faith formation presentation on the ways Scripture and Catholic Social Teaching call us to understand our “welcoming of the stranger among us… the immigrant, the migrant, and the refugee in our midst” is an encounter with Christ.
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All members of our Immaculate Conception parish and the Immaculata School community are invited to attend!
Ken’s graduate studies, research, and teaching at the University of Notre Dame, Loyola University Chicago, and Duke University focused on the intersection of Catholic social thought, systematic and moral theology, philosophical ethics, and political theory in the Western intellectual tradition, with a particular emphasis on Catholic discernment and post-Shoah theology in response to the challenges of post-Enlightenment secularism and modernity.
“CATHOLICISM & THE MODERN NATION-STATE”
WINTER 2025 JPIC FAITH FORMATION PRESENTATION
Thursday, February 27, 2025 | 7-8:30 pm, San Damiano 2
Light refreshments will be provided
On Thursday, February 27, from 7-8:30 pm, in San Damiano 2, Ken Chiha, Director of Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation (JPIC) will offer our Winter JPIC faith formation presentation.
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To complement our upcoming JPIC Lenten Book Study and to address recent political movements, this presentation will provide a brief overview of the theological development of Catholic social teaching concerning Christianity’s relationship to the modern nation-state within the western intellectual/political tradition.
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All members of our Immaculate Conception parish and the Immaculata School community are welcome to join us.
“CIVILIZE IT - A BETTER KIND OF POLITICS:” UNIFYING A POLARIZED CHURCH AND A DIVIDED NATION
FALL 2024 JPIC FAITH FORMATION PRESENTATION
Thursday, October 24, 2024 | 7-8:30 pm, San Damiano 2
Light refreshments will be provided
In Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis encourages us to seek “a better kind of politics, one truly at the service of the common good” (no. 154). How will you respond?
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On Thursday, October 24, from 7-8:30 pm, in San Damiano 2, Ken Chiha, Director of Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation (JPIC) will offer our Fall JPIC faith formation presentation on Catholic Social Teaching and the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops initiative, “Civilize It - A Better Kind of Politics.”
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As we approach our upcoming election on November 05th, this presentation will focus on the Catholic Church and Pope Francis’s vision of politics as one human family, listening to understand, encounter, and grow through charity, clarity, and creativity to identify common values and seek the truth together, where we jointly come up with solutions to the problems that face our world.
All members of our Immaculate Conception parish and the Immaculata School community are welcome to join us.
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STANDING IN THE RIGHT PLACE: UNDERSTANDING SCRIPTURAL AND CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING ON MULTICULTURALISM
SPRING 2024 JPIC FAITH FORMATION PRESENTATION
Wednesday, May 15, 2024 | 7-8:30 pm, San Damiano 2
Light refreshments will be provided
On Wednesday, May 15, from 7-8:30 pm, in San Damiano 2, Ken Chiha, Director of Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation (JPIC) will be giving a JPIC faith formation presentation in support of Immaculate Conception and Immaculata's celebration of Pentecost and our Pentecost Multicultural Festival.
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The presentation will discuss how the Scriptural and Catholic Social Teaching understandings of multiculturalism are both distinct and share similarities with the concept as it is framed in our contemporary public discourse.
All members of our Immaculate Conception parish and the Immaculata School community are welcome to join us. |
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JPIC LENTEN CELEBRATION OF OSCAR ROMERO, ARCHBISHOP OF SAN SALVADOR
SAINT - PROPHET - MARTYR - SERVANT OF GOD
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During Lent, Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation (JPIC) will be celebrating the prophetic servant of God and martyred Archbishop of San Salvador, Saint Oscar Romero. Romero’s embodied commitment to living the Gospel calls us to recognize how theology, scripture, spirituality, liturgy, sacramentality, politics, racial, cultural, economic, and all forms of justice are all interwoven in our service to God and neighbor.
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ROMERO EVENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS
BRIEF BIOGRAPHY
- Who Was St. Oscar Romero?
- Screening of Romero Film
- PHD St. Oscar Romero Lenten Book Studies
- JPIC Presentation - “Taking the Side of The God of Life:” St. Oscar Romero and Catholic Liberation Theology
- St. Oscar Romero Relic Bilingual Ecumenical Evening Prayer Service
- RESPETO Youth St. Romero Bilingual Living Stations of the Cross (Via Crucis)
EVENTS OFFERED BY DUKE UNIVERSITY DIVINITY SCHOOL'S CENTER FOR RECONCILIATION
- Strangers No More: Prayer Service for Immigration
- Christian Unity Bilingual Prayer Service
- Divinity Worship: Service of Word and Installation of Romero Relic
“There is no dichotomy between man and God's image. Whoever tortures a human being, whoever abuses a human being, whoever outrages a human being, abuses God's image.”
- Oscar Romero, Homily on the Feast of St. Silvestre, December 31, 1977 (Catholic Doctrine on Torture)
- Oscar Romero, Homily on the Feast of St. Silvestre, December 31, 1977 (Catholic Doctrine on Torture)
WHO WAS ST. OSCAR ROMERO?
All direct citations and biographical information I have summarized below provided courtesy of the “The Archbishop Romero Trust.”
Oscar Romero was Archbishop of San Salvador. At 6:26 pm on Monday, March 24, 1980, with a single marksman’s bullet, Oscar Romero was assassinated at the foot of a huge crucifix while celebrating Mass in the chapel of the Divine Providence cancer hospital where he lived.
But who was Oscar Romero and why was he assassinated?
But who was Oscar Romero and why was he assassinated?
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According to biographers at the “The Archbishop Romero Trust,” Romero was ordained Auxiliary Bishop in 1970 following seven years of pastoral famine in the capital city, San Salvador, where he worked as an ecclesiastical bureaucrat. “He gained a reputation as a stubborn and reactionary prelate. Seemingly unsympathetic to the new social justice thrust of the Latin American Church, he was suspicious of the clergy and the Base Christian Communities of the archdiocese working alongside the exploited rural poor, promoting social organizations and land reform.”
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Romero was appointed Archbishop of San Salvador in February 1977 after he had a transformative experience briefly serving in the countryside as the Bishop of Santiago de Maria where he witnessed “the semi-feudal misery and hardship of the campesinos and witnessed the murderous repression being suffered at the hands of the security forces.” In our book for this year’s JPIC Lenten Book Study, “The Violence of Love,” James R. Brockman, S.J. tells us that "in just over three short years, Oscar Romero was transformed from a conservative defender of the status quo into one of the church's most outspoken voices of the oppressed."
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The biographers at “The Archbishop Romero Trust,” describe Archbishop Romero as the voice of the voiceless poor who was willing to speak truth from his Cathedral pulpit “in a society of cover-up and lies… as the social and political conflict in El Salvador intensified with electoral fraud blocking change, and peaceful protest being met with massacres and death squad killings.” In his homilies, Archbishop Romero,
- Denounced the killings, torture, and the disappearances of community leaders.
- Demanded justice and recompense for the atrocities committed by the army and police.
- Set up legal aid projects and pastoral programs to support the victims of the violence.
- Rejected the violence perpetrated by the left as well as the right, never ceasing to promote peaceful solutions to his nation’s crisis.
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Yet, his commitment to the Gospel and the teachings of Christ led to continual death threats, where he was “vilified in the press, attacked, and denounced to Rome by Catholics of the wealthy classes, harassed by the security forces, and publicly opposed by several episcopal colleagues.” Oscar Romero “died a Eucharistic martyr, a martyr to the option for the poor, a martyr to the Magisterium of the Church – and now recognized as Saint Oscar Romero,” canonized by Pope Francis on 14 October 2018.
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“When the church hears the cry of the oppressed it cannot but denounce the social structures that give rise to and perpetuate the misery from which the cry arises.”
- Oscar Romero, August 06, 1978.
- Oscar Romero, August 06, 1978.
JPIC SCREENING OF ROMERO FILM
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FRIDAY, 02/16, 6:30-9 pm
IN ENGLISH: Daily Chapel, Immaculate Conception Catholic Church IN SPANISH: San Damiano 2 SMALL RECEPTION (BOTH GROUPS)
Gathering Space, Immaculate Conception Catholic Church “A church that suffers no persecution but enjoys the privileges and support of the things of the earth - beware! - is not the true church of Jesus Christ. A preaching that does not point out sin is not the preaching of the gospel. A preaching that makes sinners feel good, so that they are secured in their sinful state, betrays the gospel's call.”
- Oscar Romero, March 11, 1979. |
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“The church will always exist as long as there is one baptized person. And that one baptized person who is left in the world is responsible before the world for holding aloft the banner of the Lord’s truth and of his divine justice.”
- Oscar Romero, Homily, 1979.
- Oscar Romero, Homily, 1979.
JPIC ST. OSCAR ROMERO LENTEN BOOK STUDY
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“To try to preach without referring to the history one preaches in is not to preach the gospel. Many would like a preaching so spiritualistic that it leaves sinners unbothered and does not term idolaters those who kneel before money and power. A preaching that says nothing of the sinful environment in which the gospel is reflected upon is not the gospel.”
- Oscar Romero, February 18, 1979.
- Oscar Romero, February 18, 1979.
“TAKING THE SIDE OF THE GOD OF LIFE”
ST. OSCAR ROMERO AND CATHOLIC LIBERATION THEOLOGY
WINTER 2024 JPIC FAITH FORMATION PRESENTATION
Wednesday, March 06, 2024 | 7-8:30 pm, San Damiano 2
Light refreshments will be provided
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"Beautiful is the moment in which we understand that we are no more than an instrument of God; we live only as long as God wants us to live; we can only do as much as God makes us able to do; we are only as intelligent as God would have us be.”
- Oscar Romero, March 23, 1980.
- Oscar Romero, March 23, 1980.
ST. OSCAR ROMERO RELIC
BILINGUAL ECUMENICAL EVENING PRAYER SERVICE
Friday, 03/15, 6:30 pm, Immaculate Conception Catholic Church
Join us for an ecumenical evening prayer service celebrating the reception of a relic of St. Oscar Romero with Bishop Luis Zarama and Dr. Edgardo Colón-Emeric, Dean of Duke Divinity School.
Join us for an ecumenical evening prayer service celebrating the reception of a relic of St. Oscar Romero with Bishop Luis Zarama and Dr. Edgardo Colón-Emeric, Dean of Duke Divinity School.
RESPETO YOUTH ST. ROMERO BILINGUAL LIVING STATIONS OF THE CROSS (VIA CRUCIS)
Friday, 03/29, 5:30 pm, Begins @ Immaculate Conception Catholic Church
In honor of our parish’s reception of the relic of St. Oscar Romero, our RESPETO youth program will be incorporating reflections from St. Romero into their annual Good Friday Bilingual Living Stations of the Cross this year. Prepared by Fray Javier del Ángel de los Santos, OFM, from Our Lady of Guadalupe Province, these Romero reflections emphasize the importance of experiencing and living the Stations of the Cross in a personal and meaningful way.
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Please join our RESPETO youth in commemorating the profound experience of Good Friday as we find our place in accompanying Jesus to Calvary, prayerfully remembering the tremendous sacrifice and love Christ bestowed upon us on the Cross. The procession begins inside Immaculate Conception Catholic Church’s sanctuary. We then proceed throughout our neighborhood “with Jesus,” sharing a reflection and meditation at each station, until we return to the sanctuary for the final station. For more information, please contact Medardo Gómez [email protected]
SELECTED ST. OSCAR ROMERO RELATED EVENTS
OFFERED BY DUKE UNIVERSITY DIVINITY SCHOOL'S
CENTER FOR RECONCILIATION
WEEK OF PRAYER FOR CHRISTIAN UNITY (WPCU)
THURSDAY, 01/18 - THURSDAY, 01/25
STRANGERS NO MORE: PRAYER SERVICE FOR IMMIGRATION
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CHRISTIAN UNITY BILINGUAL PRAYER SERVICE
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DIVINITY WORSHIP: SERVICE OF WORD AND INSTALLATION OF ROMERO RELIC
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AWAY IN A MANGER: INCARNATIONAL THEOLOGY AND THE FRANCISCAN UNDERSTANDING OF SOCIAL JUSTICE
WINTER I 2023 JPIC FAITH FORMATION PRESENTATION
Monday, December 18, 2023 | 7-8:30 pm, San Damiano 2
Light refreshments will be provided
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In celebration of the 800th Anniversary of Saint Francis’s first Nativity in Greccio, Ken Chiha, Immaculate Conception’s Director of Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation (JPIC) will be giving a presentation on the ways the nativity represents the heart of St. Francis “incarnational theology” and commitment to the Gospel’s call to justice. As Pope Francis explains, for St. Francis, the nativity scene invites “us to ‘feel’ and ‘touch’ the poverty that God’s Son took upon himself in the Incarnation. Implicitly, it summons us to follow him along the path of humility, poverty, and self-denial that leads from the manger of Bethlehem to the cross.” All members of our Immaculate Conception parish and the Immaculata School community are welcome to join us.
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“THE EARTH IS THE LORD’S” (PSALM 24): UNDERSTANDING OUR CONNECTION WITH ALL OF CREATION
GOD’S REVELATION IN SCRIPTURE AND CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING
FALL 2023 JPIC FAITH FORMATION PRESENTATION
Monday, September 18, 2023 | 7-8:30 pm, San Damiano 2
Light refreshments will be provided
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What do the bible and our Catholic faith tell us about our relationship with the earth and all of creation? As a Franciscan, Laudato Si’ parish and school community, our celebration of the Season of Creation takes on a particular meaning that often becomes obscured behind scientific or political discussions around climate change or environmental social policy. Yet, it is the outpouring of joy and love found in our faith in God, the proclamation of the Gospel, and our call of discipleship as church/ecclesia (the people of God) that must be the foundation of all our commitments and actions in the world.
Please join us for us for a biblical/theological Care for Creation faith formation presentation by Ken Chiha, Director of Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation (JPIC), in support of Immaculate Conception’s celebration of the Season of Creation and Saint Francis Week. |
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"THE LETTER:" A MESSAGE FOR OUR EARTH
FILM SCREENING AND DISCUSSION OF IC'S LAUDATO SI' ACTION PLAN
WINTER II 2023 JPIC FAITH FORMATION PRESENTATION
Saturday, February 04, 2023 | 9-11:30 am, Fellowship Hall (Immaculata Gym)
Food and refreshments will be provided
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Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation (JPIC) invites all parishioners to come together for a parish-wide screening, reflection, and discussion of a new documentary called The Letter. We also will discuss what we can do here at Immaculate Conception through our Laudato Si' Action Platform to join the movement of people who are building a better future. Limited childcare will be available. Registration is encouraged but not required. We hope you will join us!
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As Catholics, particularly within a Franciscan parish, we are called to care for all of God’s wondrous creation. Pope Francis's “encyclical letter,” a short book written by a pope, called Laudato Si’ encourages us to see how “everything is connected.”
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In this film, frontline leaders journeying to Rome to discuss the encyclical letter Laudato Si’ with Pope Francis share their stories of how spiritual values unite us in the face of the planetary emergency. You can watch the trailer on YouTube here. The exclusive dialogue with the Pope, included in the film, offers a revealing insight into the personal history of Pope Francis and stories never seen since he became the Bishop of Rome.
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The way we treat the Earth, our common home, reflects how we treat each other. Caring for each other means caring for the home we share. Our Holy Father Pope Francis invites all people of goodwill to hear the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.
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© All rights reserved.
If you have questions regarding our various JPIC ministries, please contact:
Kennith M. Chiha, Director of Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation (JPIC)
Immaculate Conception Catholic Church - 901-A West Chapel Hill Street, Durham, NC 27701
(919) 682-3449 Ext. 293 - [email protected]
If you have questions regarding our various JPIC ministries, please contact:
Kennith M. Chiha, Director of Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation (JPIC)
Immaculate Conception Catholic Church - 901-A West Chapel Hill Street, Durham, NC 27701
(919) 682-3449 Ext. 293 - [email protected]