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JPIC Committee Encounters History & Hospitality in New Orleans, LA May 3rd, 2019
From April 28 to 29 the OMI JPIC Committee gathered in New Orleans, LA at the historic St Augustine Catholic Church for their first meeting in the new year. The group meets twice-yearly to review and share progress on JPIC’s work. Discussions centered on JPIC’s core areas of work – efforts to combat opioid crisis; socially responsible investing; integrity of creation initiatives (Oblate Ecological Learning Center; the Community Supported Garden in Godfrey, IL & Three Part Harmony Farm in Washington, DC); and human dignity initiatives like immigration and human trafficking. Discussions also centered on engagement and outreach to young adults and retired Oblates.
From L to R: Gary Huelsmann, Victor Carmona, Fr. Daniel LeBlanc, Fr. Seamus Finn & Fr. Emannuel Mulenga
The group also took a break from meeting discussions to learn more about their Oblate host and St. Augustine Church, which is the oldest African-American Catholic parish in the U.S. The parish was founded in 1841 by free people of color and the grounds were once part of a slave plantation. During a tour led by Fr. Emmanuel Mulenga OMI, pastor of St Augustine, the group learned more about the history of the Church property and paid a visit to the Tomb of the Unknown Slave. The JPIC Committee also enjoyed lunch with local Oblates.
(From L to R) Fr. Raymond Cook (plaid shirt), Dr. Victor Carmona, Gary Huelsmann, Fr. Emannuel Mulenga, Fr. Seamus Finn, Fr. Daniel LeBlanc & Fr. Anthony Rigoli
The US JPIC Advisory Committee is a mix of Oblates and laypersons passionate about issues of justice, economic development and ecology. They serve as a sounding board for the JPIC Office.
Tomb of Unknown Slave
Current US JPIC Advisory Committee members are:
- Dr. Victor Carmona, Chair, Assistant professor of Theology and Religious Studies, University of San Diego
- Fr. Séamus Finn, OMI, is OMI JPIC Director & Chief of Faith Consistent Investing – OIP Investment Trust
- George Ngolwe, is Associate Director, OMI JPIC
- Mr. Gary Huelsmann, is Chief Executive Officer at Caritas Family Solutions, Belleville, IL
- Ms. Patti Radle, is Co-Director of Inner City Development, San Antonio, TX
- Sr. Maxine Pohlman, SSND, is Director of the Oblate Ecology Initiative, Belleville, IL
- Fr. Ray Cook, OMI, is Oblate Council Representative & Director & Chaplain, Catholic Student Center, Rice University, Houston, TX
- Fr. Daniel LeBlanc, OMI, is International JPIC Office and Oblate UN Representative – New York
Also in attendance were Rowena Gono (Communications – OMI JPIC) and Bayor Chantal (Office Coordinator)
As a ministry for the Province, JPIC has several ongoing opportunities to support this ministry; either as a committee member or you can join a network of JPIC active supporters and sponsors.
If you are interested please let us know at jpic@omiusa.org.
Fr. Ray Cook, OMI, & Rice University Students Visit OMI JPIC Offices March 14th, 2019
OMI JPIC recently hosted Fr. Raymond Cook, OMI, & Rice University students at JPIC offices. Fr. Ray is currently the chaplain at Rice University. The students shared on their activities through the campus ministry and JPIC staff presented on how their work connects with Catholic Social Teaching.
Group photo
Presentations from JPIC staff
Fr. Seamus Finn, OMI participates from Rome
Fathers Rufus Whitley and Séamus Finn at Vatican Conference February 25th, 2019
Republished from OMIUSA.ORG
The Third Vatican Conference on Impact Investing: Scaling Investment in Service of Integral Human Development focused on concrete ways that capital can be put to use to help the poor around the world.
Attendees converged on the Vatican from all corners of the globe to hear about a variety of social enterprises and impac
t funds designed to do just that — some are examples of how investors can deploy their capital, others were actively seeking funding ranging from commercial investment to blended finance, a combination of investment and philanthropy. All of the featured enterprises and funds use impact capital to sustainably provide goods, services, and/or jobs to the very poor at scale.
Taking place last July in Rome, the conference drew leaders from the Catholic Church, business, banks, the investment world, academia, foundations, humanitarian organizations and many others interested in the issue. As in previous years, it was co-hosted by the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development (IHD) and Catholic Relief Services (CRS), the official overseas humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States.
Visit OMIUSA’s website to read the full article.
Fr. Séamus Finn Speaks on Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) at Australian Mining Conference November 1st, 2018
The International Mining and Resources Conference (IMARC) is Australia’s largest annual mining conference attended by over 6000 mining leaders, policy makers, investors, innovators and educators from over 90 countries. The event this year was held from October 30th to November 1st. The conference presentations centered on exploration, investment, policy, diversity, technology and the future of mining and collaboration.
Fr. Séamus Finn, OMI, participated in multistakeholder conversations on responsible sustainable development that is inclusive and committed to the universal common good, within the People, Projects & Infrastructure track.
Fr. Seamus Finn, OMI, Visits Oblate Parish in Edinburgh, Scotland September 26th, 2018
On September 21 Fr Séamus Finn, OMI, visited St Mary’s Star of the Sea, an Oblate parish in the Leith district of Edinburgh, Scotland which falls under the Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh. The Oblates have had a missionary presence there since 1849.
September 21 was also the feast day of St Matthew and the day’s schedule included Noon liturgy 
followed by fellowship. Fr. Séamus met with the pastoral team to discuss JPIC issues and programs and to hear about projects the parish is pursuing. They also talked about Faith Consistent Investing and how people of faith, as well as religious institutions, need to continue pushing their financial consultants to help them integrate their beliefs into the investment opportunities and funds that they recommend to them.
St Mary’s Star of the Sea has an active justice, peace and integrity of creation group. They work on practical projects, focusing on a different theme every couple of months. Some of their recent JPIC pursuits include:
- Fairtrade – the parish participated in Fairtrade Fortnight, a two- week annual campaign organized by the Fairtrade Foundation that invites people to consider fair trade options when making purchases, including in the workplace.
- Sanitation –they successfully organized a fundraiser and raised money to purchase 10 latrines for people in a developing country through the humanitarian group Toilet Twinning
The parish also joined Christians worldwide to celebrate the 2018 Season of Creation – www.seasonofcreation.org – which kicked off on September 1 with the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation. The observance runs from September 1 and ends on October 4, also the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi. Major Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, and Anglican organizations have joined to encourage the 2.2 billion Christians worldwide to pray and act on ecological issues.
St Mary’s fairtrade program
St Mary’s Parishioner
Vatican Voices and Tech Companies’ Ethics August 24th, 2018
Rev. Séamus Finn, OMI, Delivers Remarks at
2018 Annual Event of Socially Responsible Investment Coalition (SRIC)
(Download PDF of Remarks here)
Work continues apace on a set of ethical investment guidelines that will provide a Catholic perspective on Faith Consistent Investing and therefore be of service to the Vatican itself and to other Catholic Institutions and organizations around the world. This has been in many ways a work of research and consolidation that has worked to mine the Scriptures and the Tradition for insights, teaching, guidance and principles that relate to the kinds of decisions, operations, activities and questions that asset managers including investment committees and individual investors deal with every day. In ad
dition, this project has included an analysis of the investment principles and guidelines that have already been adopted and published by some bishop’s conferences, individual dioceses and religious institutions. Many of you won’t be surprised by what’s in drafts of this document because of the rich and longstanding commitment that your institutions have made to aligning the ways in which you manage your assets with the missionary charisms and priorities of your congregations. Your experience as well as the experience of believers from other faith traditions has already played an important role in verifying that the integration of beliefs and values into the investing process does not mean the sacrifice of financial return while at the same time achieving significant social and environmental return in the process. This approach is wholly consistent with the message of the encyclical Laudato Síthat has been so well received by faith and business communities.
This encyclical and projects, like the one undertaken by the Vatican, is a cause for gratitude and celebration because it elevates and amplifies the voice and presence of the church in venues across the world where the issues that many of you have worked very hard on for a number of years are debated. This has been an important part of your mission here at SRIC, the extended community of ICCR and the mission of many other faith traditions. I think this history and the Catholic Social Teaching tradition and the encyclical Laudato Síprovide a great foundation for the guidelines that are being prepared for the Vatican and subsequently for asset management professionals at Catholic institutions. Today this work embraces the broad spectrum of human rights that have been adopted by the United Nations as well as the care and cultivation of the environment, “our common home” that was highlighted by Pope Francis. The opioid crisis and genetically modified organisms, climate change and access to potable water are also priorities. Work with extractives companies including those in the oil, gas and mining sector and about health care so are an important part of those conversations and activities.
Oeconomicae et Pecuniariae Quaestiones; Economic and Financial Questions
There is another document, that I am told will see the light of day very soon (was subse
quently published in May 2018) that is a compilation and consolidation of Pope Francis’s thinking and teachings on the economic and financial questions, on money and on the global financial system. It is significant that this document is being developed by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and therefore will serve to locate these teachings at the heart of the church’s teaching tradition. This is in some ways reminiscent of the manner in which the Second Vatican Council located the social mission of the church at the center of the church’s mission and an integral dimension of evangelization. While we know that the Catholic Social tradition has frequently presented guidance on any number of questions about the operation of the global financial system, the perspective of the tradition on the benefits and deficits that flow from economic growth, the integration of the financial system that has resulted from globalization and the efforts to harmonize and coordinate financial regulation as well as the flows of goods, capital and peoples will be studied by many practitioners. Many of these economic and financial questions operate underneath the surface of the issues that SRIC is involved in or anybody who’s involved in faith consistent investing. They will also speak to anyone who’s involved in considering and trying to understand the operations of the financial system and the regulatory debates that are considered in Congress and other legislative bodies and adopted and enforced by different regulators. The document will lay out a vision of a financial system and articulate some guiding principles going forward. I suppose somewhere, between what we often talk about as free market capitalism and a more centralized social economy that is being debated and discussed in many places these days, is a topic and issue that the church has often written about. Many are hoping that this document will offer more clarity on some of the specific issues that were deemed to be at the heart of the near global financial calamity in 2018. I think that this document will be a rich resource for the kind of work that you at SRIC do, and that anybody involved in financial services and asset management ought to be paying attention to.
Amazon, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, and Google
I wanted to mention one other issue before I close because it is very current and very important. It is also one of the topics that we have been wrestling with at ICCR recently and it was highlighted this past week for us in Washington; the operating principles and activities of the five of the biggest tech companies: Amazon, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, and Google. What social purpose do they serve? What is the relationship between the kind of services and products that they operate or produce and human right, the environment and the wellbeing of human communities across the world. How important and how pivotal an issue this is and how important it is not just for investors whether to invest in Apple or Amazon or Microsoft is important in its own right, but it also opens up a whole other set of questions for the faith consistent and socially responsible investing community. When you think alone about the fact that Facebook has a market capitalization of about $580 billion dollars with 20,000 employees, that’s double the size of the market capitalization of Walmart—with about 1.1 million employees in the United States. How much do we know about and understand what these five giants in the tech/communications industry? I’m sure you heard Mr. Zuckerberg assure senators and congressmen that they were hiring 20,000 more people in the coming months to handle the questions related to Cambridge Analytica scandal and the broader issues of user privacy, “fake news” and exploitation of the tools and services that they have developed. I think largely—what is the added value? what is the product? what is the good that Facebook has created relative to society? Mr. Zuckerberg started out by saying he created Facebook to do two things—he wanted to bring people together and build community starting in his dorm in Harvard. However, we also know that, in a very short amount of time, this company has grown to its present size and has any number of people are engaged in manipulative and abusive practices on others and other questions and concerns about privacy, freedom and illegal activities.
The second thing I want to say about it is very simply that I know this is probably going to convince some of you to not look at Facebook. I encourage you to at least not to let this present controversy push you away from in terms of its capacity and in terms of its utility and in terms of what it may bring to the kind mission that I know most of the organizations in this room are involved in. It is indeed a very important and significant tool like all tools and all technology and can be used for good and purportedly used to disrupt and to create confusion, but it does need our attention. It does need us to engage, it does need us to think about the kind of questions that are out there, as it has, I think, made a lot of people think about that data—how much they reveal on which they put on there, what kind of walls need to be built between some of the things that are shared and not shared, that’s fine. But it does create these other levels of community and communication and establish new and vibrant networks that are extremely important. Aside from that, I think as I have said, the Facebook and Walmart comparison may be an entrance into the kinds of questions that many of you are reflecting on regularly like; how wealth and value are created and what corporations bringto society—how we measure it and how we value it.