The Rev. Mpho A. Tutu to Speak at SU Tuesday, February 15

SALISBURY, MD---The Rev. Mpho A. Tutu, founder and executive director of the Tutu Institute for Prayer and Pilgrimage, shares her message of peace and faith as the next speaker in the Salisbury University Center for Conflict Resolution’s “One Person Can Make a Difference” lecture series. Her talk, “Forgiveness: A Gift to the Giver” is 7 p.m. Tuesday, February 15, in the Great Hall of Holloway Hall.

Tutu is an experienced preacher, teacher and retreat facilitator. She has run ministries for children in downtown Worcester, MA; for rape survivors in Grahamstown, South Africa; and for refugees from South Africa and Namibia at the Phelps Stokes Fund in New York. She earned her Masters of Divinity from the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA and began her ordained ministry at Historic Christ Church in Alexandria, VA.

With her father, Nobel Peace Prize-winning anti-apartheid icon Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, she recently authored Made for Goodness: And Why This Makes All the Difference, about finding joy and hope in even the most dire of situations. When asked how it is possible to see joy despite personal tragedies and large-scale violence, Tutu said that it “comes from the deep recognition that evil will not and cannot and does not have the last word … even the worst cannot defeat us because the best is always yearning and struggling to come out in our lives.”

Tutu is the Chairperson Emeritus of the board of the Global AIDS Alliance, chairperson of the board of Advisors of the 911 Unity Walk, and a trustee of Angola University.

With her appearance at SU, Tutu joins the ranks of recent guests in the lecture series, including Dr. Arun Gandhi, peace scholar and grandson of Mahatma Gandhi; former President of Poland Lech Walesa; and former President of South Africa F.W. de Klerk (who received his first U.S. honorary doctorate from SU).

Admission is free, but tickets are required. Tickets are available at the Information Desk of the Guerrieri University Center. For more information call 410-219-2873 or visit the SU Web site at www.salisbury.edu.