'Crowned with Glory and Honour': Safeguarding as the Remembering of Human Dignity
Fr Hans Zollner SJ
Saturday 23 January 2027 | 3:00–4:30pm GMT | Online via Zoom
Safeguarding is too often framed only as risk management. This session returns to Psalm 8 — "What is man, that you are mindful of him?… You have crowned him with glory and honour" — to recover safeguarding as a theological act: the active remembering and honouring of human dignity, especially where it is most vulnerable. Fr Hans Zollner SJ draws on decades of work protecting minors and vulnerable adults in the Church to show how anthropology and safeguarding practice are inseparable.
- Understand safeguarding as a theological practice grounded in the dignity of the human person, not only a compliance requirement
- Recognise how Psalm 8's account of human dignity reframes the purpose of safeguarding policy and practice
- Apply an anthropology-of-the-person lens to safeguarding conversations in direction and pastoral settings
- Identify practical steps for embedding dignity-centred safeguarding in ministry contexts
Fr Hans Zollner SJ is a Jesuit priest and one of the world's leading figures in safeguarding and the protection of minors and vulnerable adults in the Church. He founded the Centre for Child Protection at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, where his work continues through the Institute of Anthropology: Interdisciplinary Studies on Human Dignity and Care. He returns to the Enriching Ministry Days having led our inaugural 2026 session on safeguarding as integral to the Church's mission. Website: iadc.unigre.it
'Alone Together': Sustaining Contemplative Life in the Age of AI
John Dalla Costa
Saturday 10 April 2027 | 2:00–3:30pm BST | Online via Zoom
AI now offers instant answers, constant company, and a listening ear that never tires — and something in contemplative life is at stake in that offer. John Dalla Costa explores how practitioners can help directees — and themselves — sustain silence, discernment, and relationship with God in an age of hyperconnection and artificial intelligence.
- Understand what AI-mediated relationship and interaction displaces in the contemplative and spiritual life
- Recognise how loneliness and hyperconnection present in spiritual direction and pastoral care
- Identify practical ways to help directees sustain a contemplative rule of life amid hyperconnection
- Reflect on silence, waiting, and discernment as countercultural practices in the age of AI
John Dalla Costa has spent four decades working at the intersection of faith and business as an author, consultant and teacher. In 1996, he founded The Centre for Ethical Orientation, and in 2023, he co-developed the School for Prophets with CACS. He is the author of Working Wisdom. Originally from Canada, he now lives in Sansepolcro, Tuscany.
'Priests of Creation': The Life of Prayer in a Time of Loss
Hannah Malcolm
Saturday 24 July 2027 | 2:00–3:30pm BST | Online via Zoom
St Paul writes that the whole of creation is groaning, and that we groan within ourselves alongside it. This session explores lament and the need to express grief — especially ecological grief — as a real and theologically serious presenting issue in spiritual direction and pastoral care. Hannah Malcolm roots these practices in the Christian tradition's understanding of human beings as priests of creation, offering its sorrows to God, and approaches the theme through three different prayer practices, considering their relevance to ecological loss.
- Recognise eco-anxiety and ecological grief as legitimate, theologically grounded presenting issues in spiritual direction
- Understand lament as a biblical practice, rooted in the Christian understanding of humans as priests of creation
- Explore three prayer practices and their relevance to ecological loss
- Learn how to hold grief conversations with directees and parishioners, and reflect on how this grief also affects practitioners
Hannah Malcolm is a public theologian and writer training for ordained ministry in the Church of England, and a member of the Church of England's Environment Working Group. She edited Words for a Dying World: Stories of Grief and Courage from the Global Church, and writes and speaks widely on climate grief, lament, and hope within the Christian tradition.
'The Journey Is Too Great for You': Trauma, Burnout, and the Accompaniment of Accompaniers
Dr Tim Ling
Saturday 23 October 2027 | 2:00–3:30pm BST | Online via Zoom
Elijah, spent after his triumph on Mount Carmel, collapses under a broom tree and asks God to let him die — and the angel's only answer is to tell him to eat and sleep. This session takes that scene as its starting point to name trauma, burnout, and moral injury in ministry honestly, and to ask what it means to accompany the accompaniers — the directors, chaplains, and pastoral ministers who carry others' pain and too rarely receive care themselves.
- Distinguish moral injury from ordinary burnout and recognise its signs in ministers and pastoral carers
- Understand trauma-informed principles as they apply to the wellbeing of those who accompany others
- Explore concrete, non-spiritualised practices of rest and replenishment for depleted ministers
- Reflect on the return to contemplative practice as part of recovery from ministry burnout
Dr Tim Ling writes and works on moral injury, trauma, and wellbeing in ministry through St Luke's for Clergy Wellbeing, the UK charity supporting clergy across the Church of England. His work names much of what ministers carry not as simple burnout but as moral injury — the pain of being caught between pastoral care and institutional failure — deserving theological as well as clinical attention. Website: www.stlukesforclergy.org.uk