Patrick Saint-Jean

Patrick Saint-Jean is a Jesuit priest, scholar,and clinician dedicated to the work of healing. Educated in France, Mexico and the United States — with advanced degrees in psychoanalysis and clinical psychology — he brings a rich, cross-cultural perspective to his work. Drawing on decades of research and practice across multiple countries, Saint-Jean focuses on racism, intergenerational trauma and Ignatian spirituality. A prolific author, speaker and clinician, he has devoted his life to helping individuals and communities confront and recover from some of the deepest sources of human suffering.

By this Author

An engraving titled, "Barbarity committed on a free African, who was found on the ensuing morning, by the side of the road, dead!" published in 1822 (Library of Congress/Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.)

Pope Leo has initiated the conversation Black Catholics have been waiting for

Magnifica Humanitas is the most significant map for healing that the papacy has ever placed in the hands of the Black Catholic community, writes Jesuit Fr. Patrick Saint-Jean.

Members of a Haitian dance group in Boston wait to perform outside the Basilica and Shrine of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Oct. 16, 2021. (CNS/Reuters/Shannon Stapleton)

Are you ready for a synod of possibility?

This synod invites each community to find a place for growth into their gift of identity where God is at work through practice and ritual. It is an invitation to once again let Christ be Christ in each culture.

A sculpture of the Crucifixion at Regis University in Denver (Dreamstime/Rsheya)

For a Black Jesuit in the US, racism is a crucible

Book excerpt: In The Crucible of Racism, Jesuit author Patrick Saint-Jean explores, through the lens of Ignatian spirituality, how we can begin to see Jesus in the suffering of people of color.

Josephine Baker is projected on the Pantheon monument during a ceremony Nov. 30, 2021, in Paris, France, where she was symbolically inducted, becoming the first Black woman to receive France's highest honor. (AP photo/Thibault Camus, pool)

Josephine Baker's life asks Catholics to imagine new ways to respect all — especially Black women

Commentary: Nearly 50 years after her death, Josephine Baker has a message for us as American Catholics: Her life asks us to examine the road we've taken and challenges us to consider where we want to go in the future.

How Ignatius of Loyola can help us break through the barrier of racism

"[Racism] separates our own hearts from connection with the true God, the God of Love and Life," Jesuit Regent Patrick Saint Jean writes in a new book. "The work of antiracism requires that we work at both levels: fighting the external social forces while at the same time we rearrange our own internal priorities."

Oh, God of justice, come to our aid

Commentary: When people are hungry for justice, when Black people have a sense of helplessness, when they feel that they have nothing to lose, they will be ready to go all in, just to find a simple natural food: justice.

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