Senior Naomi Peters, majoring in finance and entrepreneurship with minors in Catholic studies and interfaith leadership, wrote an article about a culture of encounter in Interfaith America magazine. She quoted Hans Gustafson, senior adjunct faculty and director of the Jay Phillips Center for Interreligious Studies, as she detailed the steps needed to create successful cross-cultural conversations.
Designed and hosted this spring by the University of St. Thomas, the 2025 Culture of Encounter Ideas Festival wasn’t just a campus event series – it was a public humanities experiment rooted in the late Pope Francis’ call for a “culture of encounter.”
From sacred soundscapes to shared meals, interreligious scholarship, and a stunning photovoice gallery, the festival offered a roadmap for building spaces that welcome tension, celebrate differences, and move beyond tolerance toward transformation. As Hans Gustafson, University of St. Thomas’ director of the Jay Phillips Center for Interreligious Studies reflected, “the festival was an invitation to stretch beyond the comfortable edges of sameness and enter the sometimes challenging, always necessary terrain of difference.”