On June 7, in collaboration with the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue (PCID), Columban Fr Robert McCulloch completed a series of lectures on '2000 years of Christianity' for a small group of non-Christian academics who have been studying in Rome since February 2016 under the Nostra Aetate programme of the Pontifical Council.
Through its Nostra Aetate programme (named after the document of Vatican II on the relation of the Catholic Church with other religions), the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue each year invites a small number of scholars and representatives of other religions to undertake a semester of studies at the pontifical universities in Rome.
Those participating this year included Mandalar Lan Kara, a Buddhist monk from Myanmar, Ms. Minsu Chang of the T'ienti Teachings from Taiwan, and Dr. Sadia Omer, a Muslim doctor from Pakistan. All attended a variety of courses at the Angelicum University which included Christian Archaeology, 14th Century English Mystics and Inter-Religious Dialogue. Before arriving in Rome, Mandalar Lan Kara had close contact with Columban Sisters in Myanmar who taught him English.
The course taught by Fr McCulloch, '2000 years of Christianity', helped provide the wider Catholic context for the participants in the Nostra Aetate programme.
Columban Fr Robert McCulloch is Procurator-General of the Missionary Society of St. Columban in Rome. He has previously lectured in Church History, Liturgy and Latin at the National Catholic Institute of Theology in Karachi Pakistan and is the author and co-translator of liturgical, church history and theology books into Urdu, the most recent being the completed Urdu translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Read more from The Far East, September 2016