Exploring “The Spiritual Work of Racial Justice” with Patrick Saint-Jean, SJ
“This is not a book to read, but work to do.”
We invite the IYAM community to engage prayerfully with The Spiritual Work of Racial Justice: A Month of Meditations with Ignatius of Loyola, by Patrick Saint-Jean, SJ.
Patrick joined us for a series of in-person conversations to kick off our book discussion groups in May 2022. The video above is a recording of our conversation with Patrick in New York City on May 10, 2022.
About Patrick Saint-Jean, SJ, Psy.D.
Patrick Saint-Jean was born in Haiti and attended the Université Victor Ségalen de Bordeaux. After graduation, he moved to Paris for graduate study in psychoanalysis at École Lacanienne de Psychanalyse. For the next 10 years, he worked and studied in Kinshasa, Congo; Florence, Italy; Katalua, Brazil; Port-au-Prince, Haiti; and Mexico City, Mexico. He completed his Psy.D. at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, where he then taught. While working at Instituto Mexicano de Seguro Social, he presented a second dissertation on intergenerational trauma. Saint-Jean’s research focused on the, “Analogy of words as a path to freedom and pathology to the boundary to innocent.”
He received a fellowship from the School of Social Science at the University of Chicago where he presented a second doctoral thesis on Race and Trauma. At the same time, he completed his theological studies at Catholic Theological Union (CTU), where he received an M.Div. and an M.A. in theology.
In 2015, he joined the Society of Jesus. Currently, Dr. Saint-Jean is in the stage of Jesuit formation known as regency, a period of focus on apostolic work. In his free time, he enjoys writing and reading about race, racism, and Ignatian spirituality. Dr. Saint-Jean speaks fluently in English, Spanish, French, Haitian Creole, Mauritian Creole, Portugues, and Italian. He writes and reads Latin, German, Zulu.