Sun, Sept 20 following the Noon Mass at The Basilica of St. Josaphat in Milwaukee, WI
Sr. Damien Marie Savino, FSE

What an interesting convergence that the Jubilee Year of St. Francis, commemorating the 800th anniversary of his death, coincides with the release of Pope Leo XIV’s landmark encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas! This lecture, given by Sister Damien Marie Savino, FSE, author of the recently published book, Learning the Language of Creation: Catholic Social Teaching and Integral Ecology, will explore the Pope’s encyclical through the eyes of Franciscan spirituality.
What can St. Francis of Assisi teach us about “magnificent humanity” in the midst of a technologically dominated world? 

From her perspective as a Franciscan Sister of the Eucharist and a Visiting Professor of Engineering at University of Notre Dame, with a concurrent appointment in the McGrath Institute for Church Life, Sister Damien Marie will reflect on how Franciscan spirituality can serve as an antidote to the excesses of the technocratic paradigm and assist the faithful in navigating the minefields of a technocratic culture.

About the speaker:
Sr. Damien Marie Savino is a Franciscan Sister of the Eucharist currently serving as the Melchor Visiting Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences (CEEES) at the University of Notre Dame, with a concurrent appointment in the McGrath Institute for Church Life. She holds a doctorate in Civil and Environmental Engineering from The Catholic University of America, from whom she received the Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award in 2022. She also holds master’s degrees in theology and soil science. Prior to this appointment, she served as Dean of Science and Sustainability at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Her scientific and engineering research focused on environmental remediation of soil and groundwater contamination, the environmental impacts of endocrine-disrupting chemicals, and the application of resilience theory to ecosystem health. For the past ten years, she has become increasingly involved in interdisciplinary projects and has lectured and written widely on Laudato Si’ and integral ecology, science and faith, ecology and theology, and questions of technology. She is the writer and co-producer of the six-episode documentary series, Creation (Salt and Light Television, 2015), and the founder and director of the “Educating for Laudato Si’ Initiative” (praisebetoyou.org, 2021). Her interdisciplinary book entitled Learning the Language of Creation: Catholic Social Teaching and Integral Ecology was published by Liturgical Press in December 2025, as part of the Enacting Catholic Social Tradition book series.