Title: University to Honor the Late Social Justice Champion Rev. Charles L. Currie, S.J.
Georgetown honors Rev. Charles L. Currie, S.J., a longtime champion of social justice who passed away at age 88 on Jan. 4.
The Georgetown community today will honor Rev. Charles L. Currie, S.J., a longtime champion of social justice who passed away at age 88 on Jan. 4.
A wake and Vigil Service will take place this afternoon and evening in the university’s Wolfington Jesuit Community for Currie, who joined the Georgetown faculty as a chemistry professor in the late 1960s and later served as director of the university’s 1989 bicentennial celebration.
He served as president of the
He served as president of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU) from 1997 to 2011; as president Xavier University in Cincinnati from 1982 to 1985; and as Wheeling Jesuit University’s president from 1972 to 1982.
Currie also played an integral role in coordinating Georgetown’s response to the 1989 murders of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter in El Salvador.
“Father Charlie was a holy man, a loyal son of Ignatius, a leader dedicated to making Jesuit higher education more deeply committed to social justice,” says Rev. Mark Bosco, S.J., the university’s vice president for mission and ministry. “He will be dearly missed by so many of us not only here at Georgetown, but from around the world.”
At AJCU, the Jesuit priest oversaw the development of the nation’s first Jesuit distance education network, strengthened the association’s relationship with Congress and created the Jesuit Leadership Seminar.
Currie also was a leader in founding theJesuit Commons, an initiative to provide online education to students in refugee camps. He had an office on the Georgetown campus.
“Fr. Currie was a fearless voice for peace and human rights up until his final days,” U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said in a statement on his passing.
Ordained a Jesuit priest in 1963, Currie was born in July 1930 in Philadelphia.
A funeral Mass will be held Jan. 12 at 10:30 a.m. at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Washington, DC. Burial will follow immediately in the Georgetown Jesuit Cemetery on campus.