Ilia Delio, OSF, PhD, a member of the Franciscan Servants of the Holy Child Jesus, North Plainfield, New Jersey, serves as an associate professor of ecclesial history and Franciscan studies at Washington Theological Union (WTU), Washington, DC. She is a member of the CFIT and director of the Franciscan Center at WTU, where she coordinates an annual symposium on Franciscan theology. She is a recognized scholar on the thought of St. Bonaventure. She is the author of, A Franciscan View of Creation (FRANCISCAN INSTITUTE PUBLICATIONS, 2003).
Joseph Chinnici, OFM, is a Franciscan Friar and a Professor at Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley. An Oxford-educated historian, Joe is a widely-respected scholar, teacher and speaker in the history of American Catholicism and the development of Franciscan theology and spirituality. His ground-breaking work Living Stones: The History and Structure of Catholic Spiritual Life in the United States (second edition 1996) has been followed by numerous articles in U.S. Catholic Historian, the co-edited Prayer and Practice in the American Catholic Community, and significant studies on the history of prayer and on the reception of Vatican II in the United States. He is currently working on Church, Society, and Change, 1965-1996, a history of the post-conciliar period in American Catholicism. In addition to his current faculty duties, Joe is Chairman of the Commission for the Retrieval of the Franciscan Intellectual Tradition (CFIT) and editor of the Franciscan Heritage Series.
Elise Saggau, OSF, has a Master of Divinity degree from Loyola University in Chicago, and a Master of Arts degree in Franciscan Studies from the Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure University in St. Bonaventure, NY. She taught theology at Mundelein College in Chicago and at the Spiritan Missionary College Seminary in Tanzania, East Africa. She also has many years of experience in religious education at parish and diocesan levels. From 1995 through 2001 she was the editor of The Cord, and served as Assistant Director of Publications at the Franciscan Institute. She is now engaged in free-lance publication work and on-going Franciscan education / formation. She currently resides in St. Paul, Minnesota
