Berkley Center

The multi-year Catholicism and Globalization project brought together scholars from around the world to shed new light on the global transformation of Catholicism from the early modern era to the present. Together, they focused on analyzing the dynamics of globalization when viewed through the prism of the Church and its historical development in three regions: the Asia-Pacific region, Latin America, and Africa. A central assumption of the project was that the Catholic Church has served as an important factor of globalization while also being continuously transformed by those global processes.

The first phase of the project—focused on the Asia-Pacific region—was organized around three workshops, which explored the following subjects: the inculturation and growth of Asian Pacific Catholicism (Melbourne, May 2016); the role of Catholicism as a “public religion” in various Asian Pacific contexts and its interactions with other majority and minority religions (Washington, D.C., November 2016); and the dynamics in the incipient formation of Pan-Asian Pacific Catholic ecclesiastical institutions, pastoral networks, theologies, and identities from Vatican II to the present (Manila, March 2017). Scholars presented research findings from each of these workshops at the capstone conference.