Georgetown Representative Office in Rome

The webinar is sponsored by the Georgetown University Representative Office in Rome.

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Roberto Catalano teaches the theology and praxis of interfaith dialogue and theo-ethics for a culture of dialogue at the University Institute Sophia, Loppiano-Firenze. He holds a master’s degree in philosophy and sociology from Università degli Studi di Torino and a doctorate in missiology from Urbaniana University in Rome. From 1980 to 2008, he worked as cultural officer at the Consulate General of Italy in Mumbai and taught Italian language in different institutions. Since 1996, he has been actively involved in interreligious dialogue and organized several symposia and events in India. From 2008 to 2021, he co-directed the Office for Interreligious Dialogue of the Focolare Movement. He has organized events of dialogue between people of different faiths, including Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism. He authored many articles for academic journals and magazines and published five books, including Fra identità e pluralismo (diario di un cristiano in dialogo con le religioni dell'India) (Città Nuova, Roma 2021) and Fraternità e dialogo tra le religioni. Esperienze di Chiara Lubich (Città Nuova, Roma 2022).

Elena Dini has worked for over 15 years as a communications specialist for different religious institutions in Rome, Italy, most recently for the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre. Until December 2024 she was the senior program manager of the John Paul II Center for Interreligious Dialogue. She holds degrees in Near and Middle Eastern studies, communications, Catholic theology, and interfaith dialogue. She offers sessions and workshops on dialogue both locally and internationally and writes on the topic. A Gingko interfaith fellow and grant recipient for international projects, she also serves locally as the official liaison with the Muslim communities for the region around Rome at the Italian Bishops’ Conference. Dini is a frequent contributor to L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, for articles related to Muslim-Catholic and Jewish-Catholic dialogue.

Michael Driessen is professor of political science and international affairs and director of the M.A. program in international affairs at John Cabot University. He also directs the Rome Summer Seminars on Religion and Global Politics. Michael received his doctorate from the University of Notre Dame and has been a post-doctoral fellow at Georgetown University in Qatar as well as a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence. He also holds a research affiliation with Cambridge University’s Von Hügel Institute and serves as an advisor for the Adyan Foundation in Lebanon. Driessen’s books include The Global Politics of Interreligious Dialogue (Oxford University Press, 2023), Human Fraternity and Inclusive Citizenship: Interreligious Engagement in the Mediterranean (ISPI, 2021; co-edited with Fabio Petito and Fadi Daou), and Religion and Democratization (Oxford University Press, 2014). He has published scholarly articles in Comparative Politics, Sociology of Religion, Politics and Religion, and Constellations and Democratization and essays in America Magazine and Commonweal.

Wolfgang Palaver is professor emeritus of Catholic social thought at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, where he taught from 2002 until 2023. He was also dean of the Catholic Theological Faculty from 2013 until 2017. He is currently teaching Catholic social thought at the Philosophical-Theological College of Brixen in Bressanone, Italy. He is an expert on the relationship between violence and religion, and on Christian peace ethics. For many years he has been engaged in interreligious dialogue on a local and an international level. Internationally he has participated in Christian-Muslim dialogue in connection with the Focolare Movement. He is president of Pax Christi Austria and became the personal representative of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe chairperson-in-office on combating racism, xenophobia, and discrimination, also focusing on intolerance and discrimination against Christians and members of other religions.

Debora Tonelli is Georgetown University representative in Rome, and co-editor, with Gerard Mannion, of Exiting Violence: The Role of Religion (De Gruyter 2024). She is also a researcher at the Center for Religious Studies of the Bruno Kessler Foundation in Trento, Italy and a visiting professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University and the Pontifical Athenaeum of St. Anselm. Her research interests focus on the dynamics between religion and violence, interreligious dialogue, and nonviolence. Her publications include Il Decalogo. Uno sguardo retrospettivo (Dehoniane, Bologna 2010), Immagini di violenza divina nell’Antico Testamento (Dehoniane 2014), Fratelli tutti? Credenti e non credenti in dialogo con Papa Francesco (Castelvecchi Roma 2022); Fra kósmos e pólis: identità e cittadinanza da una prospettiva mediterranea (Jouvence 2023).