Fr. John Meehan has been named Interim Director of Mission and Ministry at the University of St. Michael’s College as current director Sonal Castelino prepares for her canonical novitiate year. Castelino, who is discerning a vocation with the Sisters of St. Joseph of Toronto, will spend a year at the order’s federated novitiate in Brentwood, New York before returning to her current role.
“This upcoming year will be a time dedicated to prayer and study to deepen my discernment and call to religious life with the Sisters of St. Joseph,” says Castelino. The novitiate year also offers time to live in community and learn more about the order’s charism. Castelino will begin her novitiate year in August.
“We wish Sonal a fruitful year as she enters the CSJs novitiate. Since her appointment to St. Mike’s in 2021, Sonal has led renewal of our campus ministry programming. As the inaugural Director of Mission, she has championed efforts to integrate mission into all aspects of our university. While she will be missed, we are pleased that John Meehan has agreed to serve as interim director. John is valued colleague, an experienced administrator and mission leader who will provide the continuity of programming that supports our university community,” says St. Michael’s President David Sylvester.
Fr. Meehan is looking forward to the interim role because mission and ministry “is one of the most important aspects” of life at a Catholic university. It is a ministry of presence, he notes, with the door kept open for students to drop by and ask the big questions of life, regardless of faith tradition.
“Students arrive at university with a childhood faith and university is a time for that faith to grow into adulthood,” Fr. Meehan adds. “Unless students grow spiritually they don’t see a purpose to faith.”
Therefore, he says, campus ministry should be a place to feel at home, to share a bowl of soup and to meet people from diverse backgrounds. It is also a place to develop leadership skills, citing St. Mike’s tradition of leadership retreats for students, emphasizing that leadership training is not just something to do for yourself but a way to learn about and better engage in servant leadership.
He also relishes the work he will be doing to further articulate the mission of St. Michael’s, hearing from students, faculty and staff while also building relationships that are important to the university.
“Campus ministry should be a place of dialogue, helping people who are different find common ground,” says Meehan, whose extensive career as an academic and university administrator includes time serving in campus ministry at Campion College in Regina and at the Newman Centre in Toronto, as well as in Montreal.
Perhaps the most important role campus ministry serves, he adds, is to foster hope.
“We see a lot of anxiety in students these days, with worries over everything from eco-anxiety to what they will do with their lives. Campus ministry is a place where you can have those conversation, in a friendly, supportive environment.”
The mission and ministry role “dovetails nicely” with his work as Director of the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History at the University of Toronto’s Trinity College, with both roles sharing the goal of creating global citizens who are informed about, and engaged with, the world.
Dr. Meehan is an historian and the former president of the Jesuits’ Campion College and of the University of Sudbury. A graduate of McGill, Oxford, Johns Hopkins who holds a PhD from the University of Toronto, he is active in reconciliation work with Indigenous communities. He has worked in ministries with troubled youth in Mississippi, immigrants, prison inmates and people with disabilities. He is also a Visiting Fellow at St. Michael’s and Senior Fellow at Massey College.