gallagher

Michael Paul Gallagher has returned to the Father's house.

From 1990-1995, this Irish Jesuit served as a research officer of the Secretariat for Dialogue with Non-Believers as it became part of the Pontifical Council for Culture. He was known for sporting his deep learning lightly, for his diligence in work and friendship, his dialogical approaches to difficult issues, and his gentlemanly disposition.

His prolific academic and pastoral publishing is recorded elsewhere and is testament to his learning, but we remember particularly those works which connected him to the Council, including the booklet "Help my Unbelief" with a foreword from Cardinal Paul Poupard. He made several contributions to the Dicastery's journal, including this one entitled "What might St Ignatius say about Unbelief Today" (Atheism and Faith, XXVII - 1 (1992) Pontificium Consilium pro dialogo cum non credentibus). And his highly regarded What are they saying about unbelief? (New York) published as he moved on in 1995, later to become the Dean of the Pontifical Gregorian University's Theological Faculty.  

His doctoral thesis "Approaches to Unbelief" is still considered as a reference point for the Dicastery's work responding to the challenges of modern atheism, and his learning was recently sought out as Cardinal Ravasi launched the Courtyard of the Gentiles, a space for imagination and theology.