Speaker Profile

John Dear SJ

Rev. John Dear, SJ is a Jesuit priest, pastor, peace activist, organizer, lecturer, retreat leader, and the author/editor of 25 books on peace and justice.

Dear's work for peace has taken him to El Salvador, where he lived and worked in a refugee camp in 1985; to Guatemala, Nicaragua, Haiti, the Middle East, and the Philippines; to Northern Ireland where he lived and worked at a human rights center for a year; and to Iraq, where he led a delegation of Nobel Peace Prize winners to witness the effects of the deadly sanctions on Iraqi children. He has run a shelter for the homeless in Washington, DC; and served as Executive Director of the Sacred Heart Center, a community center for disenfranchised women and children in Richmond, Virginia.

He has two Masters Degrees in Theology from the Graduate Theological Union in California. In 2008 he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

In nominating John Dear for the Nobel Peace Prize, Bishop Desmond Tutu, himself a Nobel Laureate wrote:

Fr John Dear is a Jesuit priest who has been in the forefront of the religious peace movement in the United States. He is the embodiment of a peacemaker. He has led by example through his actions and in his writings and in numerous sermons, speeches and demonstrations. He believes that peace is not something static, but rather to make peace is to be engaged, mind, body and spirit. His teaching is to love yourself, to love your neighbor, your enemy, and to love the world and to understand the profound responsibility in doing all of these.

He is a man who has the courage of his convictions and who speaks out and acts against war, the manufacture of weapons and any situation where a human being might be at risk through violence. Fr John Dear has studied and follows the teachings of non-violence as espoused by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., he serves the homeless and the marginalized and sees each person as being of infinite worth. I would hope that were he to receive this honor his teachings and activities might become more widely accepted and adopted. The world would undoubtedly become a better and more peaceful place if this were to happen.

For evil to prevail requires only that good people sit on the sidelines and do nothing. Fr John Dear is compelling all of us to stand up and take responsibility for the suffering of humanity so often caused through selfishness and greed. I hope you will consider his nomination favorably.

God bless you,
Archbishop Desmond Tutu