Fr. Richard Ryscavage

Fr. Richard Ryscavage S.J. is professor of sociology and international studies at Fairfield University in Connecticut, and the founding Director of the University’s Center for Faith and Public Life, which studies areas where religion and socio-political issues intersect.

Building on his expertise on immigration issues, he is overseeing two grant-funded initiatives that study different aspects of the immigration issue: the “Immigrant Student National Position Paper” focusing on undocumented college students and “Strangers as Neighbors: Religious Language and the Response to Immigrants in the U.S.”

While he was executive director of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Office of Migration and Refugee Services, he ran one of the world's largest refugee resettlement agencies where he oversaw annual federal grants of more than $40 million from the State Department and the Department of Health and Human Services. In addition, Fr. Ryscavage was president of CLINIC, the Catholic Legal Immigration Network. He also served as national director of the Jesuit Refugee Service/USA.

Fr. Ryscavage chaired the humanitarian section of INTERACTION, the largest coalition of American non-governmental organizations working internationally. He was the first Arrupe Tutor at the Refugee Studies Centre of Oxford University in England. In 2006, he was invited by the Vatican to become a member of the official delegation of the Holy See to the 61st session of the UN General Assembly