A Dublin priest, Father John Dardis SJ, has been appointed provincial of the Jesuit order in Ireland. He will take up the post this summer when he succeeds Father Gerard O'Hanlon.
Father Dardis is currently European regional director of the Jesuit Refugee Service in Brussels. It co-ordinates the work of Jesuit refugee services in Europe.
Here in Ireland he would be better known as the highly-regarded former communications director for Dublin Catholic Archdiocese.
He held the position for five years until 2000, when he went to Brussels. Indeed, he was instrumental in establishing the Archdiocese Communications Office in 1995.
In 1995 he also visited Rwanda after the genocide there, and helped establish a radio station to assist refugees and other displaced people then living in refugee camps in Tanzania.
It was a period, he said, that was "very challenging, but a pivotal time in my own life".
In 1989 he helped establish the Jesuit Communication Centre on Leeson Street, Dublin.
Born in 1956, Father Dardis attended Belvedere College in Dublin, before entering the Jesuit order in 1974.
He took a science degree at UCD in 1980, a higher diploma in education at NUI Galway in 1983, a masters in divinity at the University of Toronto in 1989, followed by a licentiate in theology there.
In 1989 he was awarded a masters degree in TV, radio, and film at the University of Syracuse in New York.
