Students, faculty and many members of Fairfield’s Jesuit community gathered outside the DiMenna-Nyselius Library on Tuesday, Jan. 28, to dedicate a new bronze statue to St. Robert Bellarmine, the patron saint of Fairfield University.
Following the statue dedication, the attending parties relocated to the Aloysius P. Kelley Center Presentation Room to hear the annual lecture dedicated to St. Robert Bellarmine. The lecture, titled “St. Robert Bellarmine: A Man for Our Time,” was delivered by Fr. Michael Fahey, S.J., scholar-in-residence, honorary member of the religious studies department at Fairfield and a former graduate of Fairfield College Preparatory School.
Fahey spoke about the life, travels and works of St. Bellarmine throughout his time as a well respected Jesuit theologian and educator.
A nephew of Pope Marcellus II born during the Renaissance, St. Bellarmine quickly became a prominent and influential member of the Society of Jesus. He also acted as a judicator for the great debate between a powerful and orthodox Catholic Church and the new scientific theories proposed by scientific revolutionaries such as Galileo.
President of Fairfield University, Rev. Jeffrey P. von Arx, S.J., said that it is important for the Fairfield community to continuously honor St. Bellarmine because “he is the patron saint of our university, and was from the very beginning, and so I think some recognition of that, both in a physical way because of the statue and on an occasion like this, to explain to people in the community who he was and why he was important, is important to me.”
The statue was sculpted by Will Pupa, the artist-in-residence at Loyola Marymount University. Pupa said he was selected by a committee that worked with him on the artistic direction of the piece.
“I kind of see myself in the old style of an artist: My talents, my skills are brought to surface of a community rather than me just having my own vision and expressing what I want … I’m really there as an instrument for the community,” Pupa said.
The bronze statue stands over seven feet tall and is set in a large block of granite. It is located directly outside of the DiMenna-Nyselius Library, symbolically watching over the pathway thatstudents traverse to the academic buildings. St. Bellarmine holds three of his most influential written works: “De Controversiis,” which means “Controversies”; “De bene moniendo,” which means “On Dying Well,” and “De Potestate Papali,” or “On Papal Power.”
Fahey noted that St. Bellarmine “was not a wonder worker … not a visionary,” and “never made any prophetic predictions,” however, “orthodoxy was his preoccupation,” embodied by his dedication for theology, education and the political issues of the time. He was canonized a saint in 1930.
According to Fahey, the Catholic Church’s reluctance toward change during Bellarmine’s life was a consequence of the scripture being interpreted as, “How to get to heaven, not what the heavens are.”
Junior Louis Greco and Leland Bergan ’16 said they were interested to learn about St. Bellarmine, attending the lecture as an optional assignment for their religious studies course. According to Greco, the lecture was “very informative.”
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