Call for Contribution to the Publication on Michael Boym, S.J.

Dear Sir/Madame,

Hereby, I would like to announce the project of the Macau Ricci Institute to publish a monograph in the “Jesuitas Publications Series” on Michał Piotr Boym S.J. (卜彌格, c. 1612–1659) an important Polish Jesuit missionary to China. First of all, the project would like to offer an informed short introduction to the life of this eminent Jesuit. For this purpose, we would welcome your contribution which can present any aspect of the missionary, scientific or diplomatic life of Michael Boym. The text should be written in good academic English however, without excessive number of references and with essential bibliography conforming to the Chicago standards for publications.

        The deadline for submission of abstracts (500–700 words) is 1 November 2020. The final papers (after approval of abstracts) of 2000–3000 words will be due on 1 February 2021. If you know anybody who in your view has some expertise in the field and would like to contribute to this project, we would be grateful if you share with him/her this call for contribution. Please kindly conduct your correspondence in English.

With warm wishes and greetings

Jarosław Marek Duraj, S.J., Ph.D.

The Macau Ricci Institute

Vice-Director

PS: The texts should be sent to the following e-mails: 

Project Manager: Mr. Brian Chao, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Project Editor: Jarosław Marek Duraj, S.J., Ph.D., e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The Macau Ricci Institute’s Symposium for 2021 aims at drawing philosophers, theologians, business people, scholars and key opinion leaders with a strong interest in Asian cultures together to discuss the impact of the multiple interrelated crises and what they may require for a radical rethinking of the mission in support of God’s people. As the infections and death statistics indicate from day to day, the enormity of the catastrophe becomes more evident. 

The 2021 Symposium will take place during the Ignatian Jubilee Year which remembers the conversion Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556) the founder of the Society of Jesus experienced when he was wounded by a cannon’s explosion in Pamplona 500 years ago as well as the 400th anniversary of the canonization of Ignatius of Loyola with his friend Francis Xavier (1506-1552). This fact makes it especially appropriate that we rethink the key terms of “metanoia”, a profound spiritual transformation, as well as holiness and the mission of “helping souls”. The exceptional witness of faith of the Jesuit saints will be explored in light of both collective successes and failures of mission particularly in Asia. The work of the Macau Ricci Institute has sought to honour the memory of Matteo Ricci and his successors by exploring the constant search for dialogue and mutual respect in Asia. We recognize the truth of Pope Francis’ insights spelled out in his letters Laudato Si’ (2015) and Fratelli Tutti (2020) putting the principles of the Social Doctrine of the Church such as Solidarity, Subsidiarity and orientation towards the Common Good within the context of the modern world. Moreover, the Symposium aims to challenge its participants to explore a journey of faith and justice which involves a spiritual transformation, based on interreligious dialogue and collaboration, efforts at mutual understanding, and an appreciation of all the world’s wisdom traditions. We hope to honour the Ignatian Jubilee Year by exploring the following questions:

• What do the terms “solidarity”, “subsidiarity” and “Common Good” mean in the context of Asian contemporary societies and cultures?
• How has the pandemic impacted Ignatian spirituality or impacted the practices based in this spirituality?
• How can the pandemic become an opportunity to reconnect to spiritual transformation and holiness?
• How are we to define the term “mission” within a context of dialogue with other wisdom traditions particularly in the context of Asia?
• How is the concept of spiritual transformation and holiness developed in different wisdom traditions?
• Which are the new accountability structures needed to avoid predatory abuse of power?
• How can education be transformed from a privilege for the few to a service toward the common good?
• How can contemplation as a way to God become more mission and dialogue oriented?
• How can China’s “Belt & Road Initiative” foster a sense of dialogue and mutual appreciation in the midst of trade frictions and increasing distrust among nations?
• How should the paradigm shift in economics from profit maximization towards an orientation to the common good be implemented in practical and comprehensive strategies for reconstructing the global system of social interrelationships?
• How can examples of Asian leadership become a driver of spiritual transformation and holiness? 

We hope that this invitation will stimulate your own thinking and galvanize your own willingness to join us for the Symposium in October 2021.

Brief for Submissions

With this Call for Papers we invite submissions that bring together theory and practice, research studies and case-based papers that could advance the discussion of how we are to rethink our mission in light of what each of us has learned from the COVID-19 crisis. We welcome empirical studies that explore communities and practices grounded in alternative economic models, as well as conceptual papers on interreligious—as well as interdisciplinary—dialogues that may help bring a new approach to fulfilling the vision of the Common Good, and to the world’s growing demands for social and economic justice, especially among those who feel they have been left behind. 

Empirical studies should be supported by rigorous qualitative or quantitative data analysis. Conceptual work should be clearly grounded in the existing literature. Practitioner papers are welcomed to contribute to our understanding of effective teaching and learning, through research, reports and case studies that address any of the questions suggested here, or others that they believe should be addressed.

Submitted papers should have the potential to make a significant contribution both to action oriented educational and academic literature and provide specific recommendations for practical actions by governments, NGOs and companies.

Accepted papers for the Symposium will be considered for publication in the Macau Ricci Institute Journal issue number 9 which should be ready by 31 January 2022.

Submission Dates

Please submit papers or an abstract including three key points of about 700-900 words for consideration to Mr. Brian Chao, email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., by 31 July 2021. Authors of accepted papers will be notified by 31 August 2021, and at that time will be given a “Style Sheet” with instructions, on the length of the paper of 1800 - 2000 English words, formatting, the use of APA guidelines, and other technical details. The deadline for final papers is 30 September 2021. The Symposium will welcome participants at the Ilha Verde Campus of the University of Saint Joseph while also encouraging participants across the globe to join our Symposium through ZOOM.

Academic Committee

Jaroslaw Duraj

Alvaro Barbosa

Jenny Lao-Philips

Franz Gassner

Dennis McCann

Roderick O’Brien

Stephan Rothlin

Thierry Meynard

Click here to view the book introduction and price

Remarks for the launch of Acta Pekinensia Vol.2,

Oxford 11 March 2020

Paul Rule

I must begin by apologies for my inability to be present on this occasion due to a minor health problem  which however prccludes for the moment long distance flights –  and Melbourne Australia to the UK is about a long as they go. However I  was pleased to be invited to write a few remarks on the Acta Pekinensia publication project and especially on the second volume.

The Acta Pekinensia publication project has been a huge and prolonged enterprise involving many people and institutions. I am delighted that the formal launch of the second of what we hope to be four volumes takes place in Oxford at Campion Hall where the most prolific of the draft translators, Fr. Gerry Hughes, was Master. Gerry began his work towards the end of this second volume and from that point became the main, almost the sole draft translator.  But he contributed far more than that. As I have gone through the editing and annotating process I have  found and continue to find embedded as comments Gerry's amusing and self-depecatory remarks on the language and content of the Acta. I have also learned much on the problems and pitfalls of translation from Fr. Hughes' Fidelity without Fundamentalism and our email and personal exchanges on the subject. I must also confess to having not infrequently made changes in Gerry's translation, very rarely indeed because I thought them mistranslations, sometimes because he was naturally unaware of the full Chinese context,  but usually because I found the suggested equivalents to Kilian Stump's somewhat laboured Latin a little too brilliant and, dare I say, too 'English' for an audience I assume to contain many second-language readers of English­ ­– and perhaps I should include many Australian and American readers in this category as well as Chinese. The Acta translation as we have it has been enormously enriched by that interplay between Gerry and myself.

The Acta project has a long genesis going back to, appropriately, a meeting in Beijing, in 2001. But even earlier there was a protoproject in San Francisco.   In fact the Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History at the University of San Francisco, now again its main sponsor, owes its origins to  the collaboration of  two Jesuits, Fr. Francis Rouleau and Fr. Edward Malatesta, in gathering and publishing a translation of the documentation on the Chinese Rites Controversy, and especially of the Acta Pekinensia, the work of a German Jesuit missionary/scientist at the court of the Kangxi Emperor, Kilian Stumpf. I had corresponded with Rouleau, an ecclesiastical old China hand, when writing my doctoral thesis in 'the Jesuit Interpretation of Confucianism' and met up with Ed Malatesta, at the Trevi Fountain in Rome in 1979, that wonder year when China was opening up to the world and everything seemed possible. Ed encouraged me over the years that followed while he went to China and later founded the Ricci Institute back in San Francisco, to work on the Acta and the other documentary treasures that Frank Rouleau had found, copied and annotated.

Then at a conference in Beijing to celebrate the fourth centenary of the arrival of the Jesuit Matteo Ricci in that city in 1601, Professors Antonio Vasconcelos de Saldahna from Lisbon and Claudia von Collani from Würzberg conceived the idea of publishing an annotated translation of the Acta Pekinensia. As someone who had worked on the Chinese Rites for some twenty years by then and was familiar with this massive (some 1500 pages long) document in the Jesuit Roman Archives, I joined the team. We met, again appropriately in Macau, on a lovely evening in a tropical garden under a banyan tree, and decided on the main lines of an enormous enterprise, to be funded and coordinated by the Macau Ricci Institute, represented at that meeting by Fathers Yves Camus and Luis Sequeira. There were to be a transcript of the manuscript, draft translations by (I think it was Fr.Yves who suggested it) retired Jesuits of the Latin-familiar older generation, then a thorough edit with introduction, annotations and scholarly apparatus by the sinologists. I often think now, the best part of twenty years later, that if we had understood the magnitude of the task we would have fled to catch the next jetfoil to Hong Kong airport. However, today we have two volumes published, a third undergoing a final edit, and a fourth and last half-finished. And the present fruitful and happy collaboration with the San Francisco Ricci Institute and Brill as well as the Macau Ricci Institute, should see us through.

What is the Acta Perkinensia? It is a day by day account – its author sometimes calls it a Diarium­ ­– of the visit to China of the Papal Legate and Apostolic Visitor, Charles Maillard de Tournon. It begins with the Legate's activities in Beijing, December 1705 to August 1706, and that section was covered by our first volume, published by the Jesuit Historical Institute in Rome in 2015. The work has now been taken over by the Ricci Instiute in San Francisco and Voliume II of the Acta now appears as the first volume in a new series, Studies in the History of Christianity in East Asia,  published by Brill. Fortunately, Stumpf  himself wrote a  Compendium of events of that period and we have been able to use it in the volume at hand as a bridge to the events that followed as the Legate made his way south.

One of the joys of immersion in this work has been my discovery of the personality of Kilian Stumpf, a largely neglected figure amongst the 'giants' of the old Jesuit missiin in China. He is a perceptive and ironic observer not only of the Legate and his party and his fellow court Jesuits, but of the tensions between the French Jesuits and those who came via Portugal ­– by the accident of the Emperor placing his glassworks which Stumpf directed in the new 'French' Jesuit house in the palace precinct in Beijing. He prided himself on his German frankness and does not hesitate to comment on the foibles of his fellow missionaries, Jesuits as well as others. He writes in a clear and careful working Latin with ocasional classical flourishes to demonstrate his erudition. And I must, at this point, pay tribute to my co- editor, Claudia von Collani, whose unparalleled knowledge of the published and unpublished sources on the China mission of the period is complemented by her insider knowledge of her fellow Würzberger, Kilian Stumpf or Ji Li'an as the Chinese call him.

The Chinese Rites Controversy is an important bellweather of a continuing and crucial debate in church history. In the controversies over the recent Amazonian Synod I could not help but note echoes of the struggles around 1700: should European models of worship and church order be imposed on a non-European culture? Can a professedly universal chuch tolerate local variation? Can we overcome the specificity of experience that underlies linguistic and behavioural norms? The Acta has much to teach missiologists, theologians and thoughtful Christians in these respects.

But the Acta also has much to interest general historians of China.Where else can we find first-hand insider/outsider accounts of court life, the real structures of power as opposed to the theory? There is much even in this second volume on the imperial family, the workings of the inner court, the eunuchs and Manchu clans and cliques. And we can see the beginnings of the fierce succession struggle between the princes which becomes a central concern in te remainder of the Acta. Kangxi once warned the Jesuits seeking his intervention against a local official that his theoretically absolute power was limited by circumstances. Never forget, he said, that we, like you, are foreigners and the Chinese hate us. There are many passages in the Acta Pekinensia  that display both the sympathy of the Emperor to the Jesuits and the fragility of their position.

Lastly, I am hoping that linguists may be interested in the Acta Pekinensia as a multi-lingual document. Both the original manuscript and the transcript are, or will be, available in various forms and I am looking forward to fruitful correspondence regarding this second volume such as I received regarding the first. The Latin is sui generis: ecclesiastical and scholarly Latin of the Seventeenth Century with some German flavouring and the letters in Spanish and Portuguese reflect a number of Iberian dialects as well as being sprinkled with colloquial Chinese in a variety of romanizations. And for entertainment, I recommend the bombastic macaronic Italian of the Legate himself.

I would like to think that the general reader too will find much of interest in our work. It is a fascinating human interest story, an epic fit for the cinema, with a cast of hundreds. We get glimpses of the Chinese and Manchus, of life in Beijing and the provinces, of  some extraordinarily talented and ­– let me frankly admit – eccentric and bizarre characters. There are pages in the Acta that read almost like a script for a film or the stage. Are there any budding screen writers or stage producers present?

Finally I must express my inadequate and belated thanks to the army of people who contributed to the Acta  project. Some day I will make a complete list but for now let me simply mention the team of Polish transcribers led by Monika Miazek; the draft translators, especially Joe Holland and Gerry Hughes; the editor of this volume Steve Ford; and especially that indefatigable corrector of scholarly and linguistic errors and expander of my knowledge of things as diverse as Chinese medicine and Manchu language, my collaborator from the beginning, Claudia von Collani.