marisa patulli trythall

Fr. Edmund Aloysius Walsh’s chief accomplishments - as a Vatican emissary (at various critical times: to Russia, Mexico and Iraq), as an educator and founder of Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, as an American representative abroad (Nuremberg trials, Japan reconstruction) are relatively well known. Less well known, perhaps, are the numerous books, articles and speeches he wrote so prolifically throughout his life. This lecture will attempt to place this impressive list of accomplishments (both in word and deed) within the context of his quintessentially American spirit, his meticulous powers of observation and his open and innovative approach to the reality of the world he saw around him. It will trace his life from its beginnings, in the Irish American community in Boston, through the educational experiences that sharpened his awareness of the international scene, and onwards through the events that shaped his geopolitical point of view.

As destiny would have it, Walsh’s life was to parallel the United States’ arrival on the world scene as an international power and he, most certainly, rose to the challenge to become an important protagonist in this transition.

mpt/GU/2009