BY JULIE IRWIN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Sister Barbara Fiand, a professor at the Athenaeum of Ohio who resigned this year after she was removed from teaching seminarians, is joining the faculty of Loyola University in Chicago.
Sister Fiand will be a research professor of spirituality in the university's Institute of Pastoral Studies. Her position in Chicago, which is in honor of the late Loyola professor Sister Irene Dugan, begins in fall 1999.
"We wanted to keep this voice alive, the voice of women in spirituality, so the appointment is in honor of Irene Dugan," said institute director Sister Camilla Burns. The institute is a graduate program to prepare students for ministry.
Sister Fiand taught for 17 years at the Athenaeum, in Mount Washington, but was removed from teaching seminarians last spring after officials concluded she did not "support priesthood as it is presently in the Roman Catholic Church."
She was reassigned to teach in the lay pastoral ministry program exclusively, but she resigned from the Athenaeum a short time later. She is spending this academic year on a sabbatical funded by her order, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, and is finishing a theological text on prayer and the quest for healing.
Sister Fiand said last week she was elated about her new position and particularly about a position that honors Sister Dugan.
"I consider it a privilege to honor her with the integrity of my teaching," Sister Fiand said. "It's a woman's voice for the church and to the church."
