Francis Xavier Clooney

Francis X. Clooney, S.J.

Born	1950 Brooklyn, New York, United States

Academic background
Alma mater	Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1984 M.Div., Weston School of Theology, 1978 B.A., Fordham University, 1973
Academic work
Discipline	Theology
Institutions	Harvard Divinity School Boston College
Main interests	Comparative theology

External video
Why Comparative Theology Works Interreligiously (2016)

Francis Xavier Clooney, S.J., is an American Jesuit Roman Catholic priest and scholar in the teachings of Hinduism. He is currently a professor at Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

A native of Brooklyn, New York, he graduated from the prestigious Manhattan Jesuit Regis High School and entered the novitiate of Society of Jesus in 1968 and was subsequently ordained in 1978. Following that, he earned his Bachelor's Degree at Fordham University in the Bronx, New York.

After earning his doctorate in South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago in 1984, Clooney taught at Boston College until 2005, serving also as the Academic Director of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies (a Recognised Independent Centre of the University of Oxford), when he became the Parkman Professor of Divinity and Professor of Comparative Theology at Harvard Divinity School. In 2010 he became the Director of Harvard's Center for the Study of World Religions. That same year he was named a Fellow of the British Academy.