Editorial

Abstract

In this edition, the second of my editorship, I am once again privileged to report that we are publishing articles from researchers across five continents: Africa, Asia, Australia, North America and Europe, representing seven countries. Taking into account the book reviews appraising scholarship from Australia, England and Ireland, the Editorial Board continues to maintain the global reach of the journal. From India, Mukti Clarence, a Jesuit priest belonging to the South Indian conference, has co-authored an article with P.D. Viju, a Catholic priest belonging to The Carmelites of Mary Immaculate (CMI) Congregation, and Tony Sam George, the Dean of Humanities and Sciences, and the Head of the Department of Psychology, Christ University, Bangalore. They have written a thought-provoking article exploring the extent to which the Jesuit education vision is being maintained in challenging circumstances in rural Chotanagpur, India, in a contemporary context, in contrast to the situation in the pre-independence era. The phrases ‘affective commitment’ and ‘psychological wellbeing’ are particularly pertinent in relation to teachers. These are regarded as central to the project of recovering the fundamental principles for the Jesuit educational mission, reflecting similar situations across Catholic education worldwide and most certainly in a UK context. A second religious order, the Comboni missionaries, features prominently in the second article by Jorge Carlos Naranjo Alcaide exploring the identity and quality of Catholic schools in Sudan currently. After a historical conspectus of the contribution and impact of the Comboni missionaries in Sudan and in order parts of Africa, focusing especially on the founder of the order, the article goes on to investigate contemporary challenges, once again in a post-independence context. The exploration of the broadening of the concept of evangelisation in a post-Vatican II context, encapsulated in the iconic Apostolic Exhortation of Pope Paul VI Evangelii Nuntiandi (1975) leads Alcaide to conclude that ‘Catholic Schools have shown special care for the cultural, religious and ethnic diversity of their staff and students based on the respect for the personal freedom and the infinite dignity of every human person’. In my view, this constitutes a significant achievement in a context in which Catholics represent just 1% of the population and reflects the central tenets of the Congregation for Catholic Education’s 2017 document Educating to Fraternal Humanism. The third article, authored by Timothy Cook, Ronald Fussell and Thomas Simonds SJ, all colleagues at the University of Creighton USA, examines comprehensively the imperative to avert a crisis in the context of the turnover and retention of Catholic School Superintendents in the USA. In explaining the contrasting roles of Catholic and public-school superintendents, the authors refer to research that reveals a significant correlation between the effectiveness of superintendents in Catholic schools and academic achievement, thereby suggesting at the outset that