Father Mark Lewis, an American Jesuit, has been nominated to take over as rector of the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome

Newsroom (17/06/2022 17:30, Gaudium Press) The American Jesuit Mark Lewis has been appointed by Pope Francis as the new rector of the Gregorian University in Rome.

Father Mark Lewis is expected to take office on September 1 and will replace the Portuguese Jesuit, Father Nuno da Silva Gonçalves, the university’s current rector.

Nuno introduced the newly appointed rector of the Gregorian saying that Father Lewis has held several important positions and that “in these important posts, Father Mark A. Lewis has acquired a wealth of academic and governing experience which he has generously placed in recent years at the service of the Pontifical Gregorian University.”

Currently in the position of vice rector, Fr. Lewis has been committed to the pedagogical formation of the faculty and the “promotion of quality, which has since become a permanent dimension of university life,” the current rector continued.

Biographical data

Father Mark Lewis, was born in Miami, USA, in 1959. He joined the Society of Jesus in 1980 and was ordained a priest in 1991. He received degrees in philosophy from St. Louis University and theology from Regis College in Toronto. In 1995, he earned a doctorate in history from the University of Toronto. From 1996 to 2004, he worked at the Jesuit Historical Institute.

During these years, Fr. Lewis began teaching on the faculty of ecclesiastical history at the Pontifical Gregorian University. In 2005, he returned to the United States and from 2008 to 2014 was superior of the New Orleans province of the Society of Jesus.(FM)

With information from Vatican News.

Compiled by Camille Mittermeier