Faculty

Biography

Dean Agbonkhianmeghe E. Orobator grew up in Benin City, Nigeria, practicing traditional African religion. After visiting the local Jesuit parish as a teen for Easter vigil Mass, Dean Orobator became enamored with Catholicism and the Jesuit Order. He saw the works of the American Jesuits as fully devoted to the service of others, resonant of an African anthropology of Ubuntu that teaches “a person is a person through other persons.” After two years of college, where he studied linguistics and African languages, he joined the Jesuits in 1986 and was ordained in 1998. 

Fluent in four languages, Dean Orobator received his Ph.D in theology and religious studies from the University of Leeds in England, his MBA from Georgetown University, and his licentiate in sacred theology from JST-SCU, from which he also received an honorary doctorate in 2012. He received a bachelor’s degree in theology from Hekima University College in Nairobi, Kenya, and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Institut de Philosophie Saint Pierre Canisius in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 

He was previously provincial superior of the Jesuits of the Eastern Africa Province. He has taught theology and religious studies at Hekima University College, St. Augustine College of South Africa in Johannesburg, and Marquette University in Milwaukee. He serves on the board of directors of Theological Studies and the board of directors of Georgetown University.

He is author of the books “Theology Brewed in an African Pot;” “Religion and Faith in Africa: Confessions of an Animist,” based on Duffy Lectures he delivered at Boston College; and “The Pope and the Pandemic: Lessons in Leadership in a Time of Crisis,” a Catholic Media Association award winner. He is editor of “The Church We Want: African Catholics Look to Vatican III,” co-editor of “Feminist Catholic Theological Ethics: Conversations in the World Church,” and a member of the editorial board of the journal Marriage, Families & Spirituality.