Jack of all trades on interfaith mission
News
Columban priest Rev Dr Patrick McInerney, who was born and raised in the mid-north of South Australia, has been appointed by Pope Leo XIV as Consultor to the Commission for Religious Relations with Muslims.
Fr McInerney said he was surprised and humbled to receive a letter advising him of the five-year appointment from Cardinal George Koovakad, Prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue.
“At my age, when all my siblings and many of my peers are long since retired, I thought the ‘r’ word on my horizon was retirement, not Rome, he said.
Not that he will live there. Fr McInerney will continue in his present roles as director of the Columban Region of Oceania and director of the Columban Centre for Christian-Muslim Relations but will visit Rome to attend annual meetings of the Commission.
With his peers and colleagues in the Commission mostly career academics with long lists of published books and articles on Islam, the Holy Qur’an, and Christian-Muslim Relations, the South Australian stressed that while he had studied and taught Islam he was not an ‘Islamologist’.
“I have read and studied theology, but am not a theologian,” he said.
“I have lived and taught Interreligious dialogue, but am not a ‘dialogian’.
“I have practised and read mission studies, but am not a missiologist. I am a generalist, not a specialist. I am the proverbial ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’!
Fr McInerney spent more than 20 years in Pakistan where he said he “learned the language and came to be ‘at home’ in the culture, never fully belonging, but no longer a stranger either, being personally enriched by living cross-culturally”.
From this experience and his formal studies in Islam, he has become “a Christian who has a heart for Islam and Muslims” while also acutely aware of the issues Christians face in a 96 per cent Muslim-majority environment.
“From my 20-plus years at the Columban Centre for Christian-Muslim Relations, I have come to know the diverse Muslim communities of Sydney. I have worked ecumenically with other Christians. I have built relations with Bahai’s, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Sikhs and Zoroastrians.
“I taught for some years as an academic but am now more of an interfaith activist with the smell of the street.
“I am a bridge-builder, a networker, a connector, promoting dialogue, exchange, and encounter between peoples and with creation.”
Adapted from an article in the Columban e-bulletin.
