St Mary’s Visiting Professor Launches Major Report

Visiting Professor in Social Justice at St Mary’s University, Twickenham Prof Francis Davis, has launched two major publications this week.

The first is an article in the latest edition of The Tablet about gaps in safeguarding in Catholic institutions, exploring the challenges in low resource settings of keeping vulnerable adults safe.

The second is a major research project on the needs of the elderly in the unique context of post-genocide Rwanda. This project was carried out in collaboration with the charity Tearfund, who are based near St Mary’s in Teddington.

This report, Ageing in Rwanda: Challenges for Church, State and Nation, was launched at a well-attended event in Parliament on Wednesday 22^nd January and can be read It can be obtained on the Tearfund Learn Website.

Prof Davis, who teaches on the MA in Catholic Social Teaching at St Mary’s, has been invited to attend the Holy Father’s first ever conference on Elderly Care. Students on the programme include Bishops Conference interns, students in formation for the diaconate from most of the dioceses in southern England and Wales, and will be hearing about Prof Davis’s research in the next few weeks.

The world-leading Africanist Professor Timothy Longman of Boston University described the study as a 'fantastic nuanced study addressing a badly neglected topic’.

For more details of the MA programme go to www.stmarys.ac.uk/postgraduate-courses-london/catholic-social-teaching.