PUBLISHED BY THE BOSTON COLLEGE OFFICE OF UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS
MAY 8, 2025 VOL. 32 NO. 17
‘You’re the Trailblazers’
INSIDE
Wrapping up its first year, Messina College is already looking ahead to Year 2
2x Campus HeadlineJourneys
New program helps employees to xxxxx. build ties within the BC community.
x Headline 4-5 Seniors to Remember xxx.
Five members of the Class of 2025 about their BC experience. xtalk Headline xxxxx.
BY ED HAYWARD STAFF WRITER
12 Yesterday and Today
A class on The Beatles delights students and professor alike.
New Program Offers Jesuit Formation for Student Affairs Professionals BY PHIL GLOUDEMANS STAFF WRITER
The same inspiration driving Boston College’s Division of Student Affairs to provide programs and services that care for the whole student now extends to the employees of its 15 affiliated departments through a new, yearlong professional development initiative. The Elevate Leadership Program— grounded in the key Jesuit value of cura personalis and launched during the 20242025 academic year—is designed to support Student Affairs’ early-to-mid-level professionals, according to Associate Vice President for Career Services and Integrated Learning Joseph Du Pont. “The program blends leadership development, mentorship, and mission-centered reflection in a way that is uniquely aligned with our Jesuit, Catholic values,” he said. “It’s also part of a broader strategic effort to enhance staff formation, community, and ‘belonging’ across the division.” Du Pont explained that Elevate, inspired Continued on page 8
A quartet of Messina College students walked across Brookline Campus a few weeks after the start of classes last fall. “It is very exciting for me to be here,” said one member of the college’s first cohort, reflecting on the past year. “It is a privilege.” photo by lee pellegrini
Messina College, which opened last summer to its inaugural class of first-generation students from Boston and other cities, is closing out its first year with students recalling their favorite events, the classes that captured their attention, and their most impactful teachers. For the first Messina class, Dean Erick Berrelleza, S.J., said the focus has been to provide nothing less than a “Boston College education” and to support Messina students as “co-creators” of their college experience and the culture of the Brookline Campus. “This is a BC education,” said Fr. Berrelleza. “What we’re doing here with our students is formative education—some-
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O’Toole Studies Confession’s Rise and Fall BY ELLEN SEAWARD SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE
For generations, American Catholics regularly went to confession, a sacred rite that offers a way to reconcile with God and the Church. But starting in the 1970s, they stopped, and in his new book, For I Have Sinned: The Rise and Fall of Catholic Confession in America, University Historian James O’Toole investigates why. Sprinkled throughout with stories and first-hand accounts of confessions from lay people and priests alike, For I Have Sinned recounts shifting perspectives and policies on a practice that is a distinguishing marker for Catholics—a way to measure and acknowledge a person’s sins. For I Have Sinned was born of a separate project of O’Toole’s, a book about an interracial family that included a number of priests and sisters, among them a Jesuit priest named Patrick Healy. Fr. Healy, O’Toole discovered, kept meticulous records of confession in his parish, adding up totals every week and every month. “Fr. Healy typically heard confessions on Saturday afternoons and evenings, and he kept the pace in his diary,” O’Toole explained. “He’d write things like ‘Today was
slack at only 88 confessions.’” The records showed O’Toole that confession—a practice conducted in private— was possible to research. “I was able to chart the decline of confession by looking at the times parishes set aside on a regular basis to hear confessions. At the typical parish in the early 20th century, there’d be five or six hours available on a Saturday. “But priests aren’t going to sit in the box if no one is coming. So you can look at the decline of confession as those hours shrink.” For example, where in the late 1950s and 1960s a church might hear confessions throughout the day on Saturdays, today that same church might only schedule confessions for one hour. And where the number of confessions heard weekly by a priest in that time might have totaled in the hundreds, nowadays that number is more likely to be counted on one or two hands. Once he started looking, O’Toole found more and more sources that documented confession, like church pamphlets and catechisms. According to O’Toole, these are the types of sources that are everywhere and then nowhere. Luckily, Boston College’s John J. Burns Library has extensive
University Historian James O’Toole photo by caitlin cunningham
holdings, particularly in its Liturgy and Life Collection. “Running into things like Fr. Healy’s diaries and the times a church has set aside for confession showed it was possible to write about the subject. And the sources that are available for this in the Burns Library are absolutely terrific.”
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