Diverse group of commencement speakers scheduled for area Catholic universities

Catholic universities in the Archdiocese of Baltimore will feature an engaging variety of commencement speakers this spring, most noted for their experiences with the death penalty, theology and business strategies.

Notre Dame of Maryland University will feature Sister Helen Prejean as the speaker at its commencement. Sister Helen, a world-renowned social justice advocate and author, will deliver a virtual commencement address to nearly 700 graduates May 22 at 11 a.m. at the Baltimore Convention Center. She will also receive an honorary doctorate of humane letters. 

Sister Helen, a Sister of St. Joseph of Medaille, has been a staunch advocate of ending capital punishment. She began her advocacy work after witnessing executions in New Orleans in the early 1980s. She was determined to shine a light on capital punishment with her 1993 book, “Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States.” Her book sparked a national debate on capital punishment and inspired an Academy Award-winning movie, a play and an opera.

She has visited both St. John Paul II and Pope Francis, urging them to establish the Catholic Church’s position as unequivocally opposed to capital punishment. After meeting with Sister Helen in August 2018, Pope Francis announced new language of the Catholic Catechism that declares the death penalty is inadmissible because it attacks the “inviolability and dignity of the person.”

Through the Ministry Against the Death Penalty, Sister Helen continues to educate the public, campaign against the death penalty, counsel death row inmates and work with murder victims’ families. 

She worked recently with Texas death row inmate John Ramirez, who won a Supreme Court decision May 24, seeking to allow his pastor to pray aloud over him and place his hands on him in the execution chamber.

Anisya Thomas Fritz, an innovative entrepreneur and founder of the Fritz Institute, will deliver the address at Loyola University Maryland’s 169th commencement May 14 at 11 a.m. at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore.

Fritz, a 1985 Loyola graduate who came to the Evergreen campus from India at the age of 17, is the proprietor and experience manager for Lynmar Estates in California’s Sonoma County. She owns the company with her husband, Lynn. 

Fritz develops and leads the customer-facing team, expanding and evolving the food and wine experiences at Lynmar, which embraces sustainability and stewardship. Fritz and her husband founded the Fritz Institute, a not-for-profit charity that works with community groups, humanitarian aid agencies and governments around the world to improve the flow of aid and goods to disaster zones.

Fritz consults with global humanitarian relief organizations and lectures worldwide on humanitarian logistics. She also teaches entrepreneurship in the wine industry at Sonoma State University and has also presented to students in Loyola’s Sellinger School of Business and Management.

Fritz will receive an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Loyola during the ceremony.

After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Loyola in 1985, Fritz earned her master’s degree and doctorate in strategic management from Virginia Tech’s Pamplin College of Business.

During the 2021-22 academic year, Loyola is honoring 50 years of Women, marking the 1971 merger of Loyola with Mount St. Agnes College, a former women’s Catholic institution run by the Sisters of Mercy. 

Mount St. Mary’s University’s 214th commencement will feature popular theology professor Resurrection Father James Michael Donohue as its speaker May 14 at 11 a.m. at the Knott Arena on its main campus in Emmitsburg.

Known as Fr. Jim throughout the community, Father Donahue will be honored with a doctorate of humane letters in recognition of his service to the university, his religious order and the local and global communities.

Father Donohue came to Mount St. Mary’s in 1996 as an assistant professor of theology and quickly became one of the university’s most popular faculty members. Twenty-six years later, he is retiring from the university after this academic year so that he can support his order, the Congregation of the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in building up the Catholic Church in Tanzania. He began his work in Tanzania during a sabbatical from the Mount in 2019-20.

Father Donohue received the Richards Award for Teaching Excellence in 2000 and a Carnegie Foundation nomination for the U.S. Professor of the Year Award in 2005. As a leader on campus, he served as theology department chairman, Knott Professor of Theology, faculty chairman, interim dean of the College of Liberal Arts, co-chairman of Middle States Accreditation and ice hockey coach. He has taught thousands of Mount students, married many alumni couples and baptized many of their children.

Among Father Donohue’s many writings is the book, ”Moral Vision: Seeing the World with Love and Justice,” coauthored in 2018 with Associate Provost David McCarthy. He is a frequent book reviewer and a prolific blogger for his order. 

For more than 30 years, Father Donohue served St. John the Evangelist Parish in Columbia and St. Bernadette in Severn. He has given many lectures, retreats, and workshops at these and many other parishes.

Born and raised in Ontario, Canada, Father Donohue earned his bachelor’s degree in English from St. Jerome’s College, The University of Waterloo; master’s in divinity from St. Peter’s Seminary, The University of Western Ontario; master’s in theology from Catholic Theological Union in Chicago; and a doctorate in theology from The Catholic University of America.

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