Notes and Comments

Meetings and Conferences

An international colloquium on the theme "Enseigner les nations: regards et apports de l'histoire"will be held at Laval University in Quebec City on May 23-25, 2012. It will study the place of history in research bearing on the modalities of the transmission of religious values, beliefs, and practices. The program and practical information can be found on the Web site http://enseignerreligions.cieq.ca.

The seventy-ninth annual meeting of the Canadian Catholic Historical Association will be held on May 28-29, 2012, in conjunction with the annual congress of the Canadian Federation of the Humanities and Social Sciences at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Waterloo. The main theme of the congress is "Crossroads: Scholarship in an Uncertain World." The association invites proposals for scholarly papers, especially those that deal with the theme as it relates to Canadian Catholic history, but papers treating any aspect of the history of the Catholic Church or Catholicism in Canada also will be considered. Proposals for either individual papers or entire sessions or roundtables of two or three related papers are welcome. Proposals should be submitted to Jacqueline Gresko, president of the Canadian Catholic Historical Association and chair of the Program Committee, at jgresko@telus.net. Information about the congress is available on its Web site, http://www.congress2012.ca.

The Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, will conduct its annual seminar for seminary and religious studies faculty on June 18-22, 2012, under the title "Understanding Complicity: The Churches' Role in Nazi Germany." It will explore the historical and theological dynamics of the alleged complicity of churches with the Nazi regime and will be led jointly by Robert Ericksen (Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, WA) and Victoria Barnett (staff director of the museum's Committee on Church Relations and the Holocaust). Further information is available from crc@ushmm.org or tel: 202/488-0469.

The Center for Medieval Culture Studies and the St. Petersburg Society for Studies of Cultural Heritage of Nicholas of Cusa have announced an international conference on "The Reformation of Martin Luther and European Philosophy and Culture," which will be held in St. Petersburg on June 28-30, 2012. Further information may be obtained from the society in care of the Faculty of Philosophy in St. Petersburg State University, Mendeleevskaya, 5, St. Petersburg 199034, Russia; tel: 812-4224261; email: odushin@mail.ru; WWW: http://philosophy.pu.ru

The Catholic Historical Society of Ireland Centenary Conference will be held on November 2-3, 2012, and will be hosted by St. Patrick's College and the History Department of the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. It will mark the centenary of the society's journal Archivium Hibernicum and will be dedicated to the theme "Ireland, Empire and Christian Civilization." Proposals for papers exploring Irish involvement in any empire (Carolingian, Holy Roman, Ottoman, and so forth) and Christian civilization will be entertained; proposals and inquiries should be submitted by email to Marian Lyons at marian.lyons@nuim.ie.

Causes of Saints

Hildegard Burjan was beatified on January 29, 2012, in St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna. She was born into a liberal Jewish family named Freund on January 30, 1883, in the then-Prussian city of Gorlitz and studied literature, philosophy, and sociology in the Universities of Zurich and Berlin; she received a doctorate in 1908. In the preceding year she had married a Hungarian entrepreneur, Alexander Burjan, and moved with him to Vienna. She gave birth to a daughter, Elisabeth, against the advice of doctors who had recommended an abortion for reasons of health. After a period of illness, she was converted and baptized in 1909. She interested herself in the working conditions and spiritual welfare of poor women and children and in 1912 founded the Association of Christian Women Home Workers, offering help to the hungry, creating a support network for families, and combating child labor. In 1918 she founded the Society for Social Help and the next year the Congregation of Sisters of "Caritas Socialis" to care for women and children in difficult situations and also for elderly...