Fr. Michel is from St. Louis, Missouri, and is a member of the Indonesia Province of the Jesuits. He has also lived and worked in Ankara, Turkey and is the former secretary of the Jesuit Secretariat for Interreligious Dialogue in Rome and former ecumenical secretary for the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (1994-2008). From 1981 to 1994 Michel worked at the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue; he spent 2008-2009 as a visiting fellow at Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown. Fr. Michel is a board member of (among others) Georgetown’s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, the Khalidi Library in Jerusalem, and the Journal of Islam and Muslim-Christian Relations. Ordained in 1967, he joined the Jesuits in 1971 in Indonesia and subsequently earned a doctorate in Arabic and Islamic studies from the University of Chicago.