Parkman Professor of Divinity and Professor of Comparative Theology at Harvard University, USA, since 2005. Francis is a Roman Catholic priest and a member of the Society of Jesus. He was previously Professor of Comparative Theology at Boston College, where he taught since 1984, after earning his doctorate in South Asian languages and civilizations from the University of Chicago. He served as Academic Director of the OCHS from 2002- 2004. His primary areas of scholarship have been theological commentarial writings in the Sanskrit and Tamil traditions of Hindu India, and the developing field of comparative theology, a discipline distinguished by attentiveness to the dynamics of theological reading and writing in light of traditions other than one's own. He has also written on the Jesuit missionary tradition, particularly in India, and is interested in the dynamics of dialogue in a postcolonial world. He is on numerous editorial boards; was the first president of the International Society for Hindu-Christian Studies; and, from 1998 to 2004, was coordinator for interreligious dialogue for the Society of Jesus. Professor Clooney is the author of numerous articles and books, including
Fr. Bouchet's India: An 18th-Century Jesuit's Encounter With Hinduism, Satyam Nilayam Publications, 2005),
Divine Mother, Blessed Mother: Hindu Goddesses and the Virgin Mary, (Oxford University Press, 2005), and, most recently,
Jesuit Postmodern: Scholarship, Vocation, and Identity in the 21st Century, (Lexington Books, 2006). He is currently writing a book on surrender to God in the writings of Vedanta Desika (fourteenth-century India) and Francis de Sales (seventeenth-century Geneva).
