Michael Severance

Michael Severance earned his B.A. in philosophy and humane letters from the University of San Francisco, where he also studied at the university's St. Ignatius Institute, a great books program. He then pursued his linguistic studies in Salamanca, Spain where he obtained his Advanced Diploma in Spanish from Spain's Ministry of Education before obtaining his M.A. in Philosophy and Modern Languages from the University of Oxford. While living in Italy, Michael has worked in various professional capacities in religious journalism, public relations, marketing, fundraising, as well as property redevelopment and management. As Istituto Acton's Senior Fellow for Strategic Engagement, Michael is responsible for helping to organize international conferences, increase private funding, as well as expand networking opportunities and relations among European businesses, media and religious communities, while managing the day-to-day operations of the Rome office.

Posts by Michael Severance

When Bernie Sanders met Pope Francis

ABC Breaking News | Latest News Videos Well, it finally happened. The pope felt the Bern. Against expectations, Pope Francis and  Senator Bernie Sanders, the Democrat candidate for U.S. president, met privately today in the Vatican hotel where the pontiff resides and where Sanders was staying as a guest. Continue Reading...

O.S.B. – Oh Sacred Business

O.S.B, the abbreviation for the Order of St. Benedict, has taken on nuanced meaning: Oh Sacred Business.  This is definitely true of a profitable Benedictine company located in Norcia, the medieval birthplace of St. Continue Reading...

Property Rights Vital for Empowering the Poor

On Jan. 27, Acton’s Rome office sponsored a presentation of The International Property Rights Index at the Dominican-run Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas. The private seminar was a premier event in Rome for the index’s publisher, introducing data and case studies sampled from 129 industrialized and developing nations. Continue Reading...

Don’t Blame Markets, But Sin for Environmental Problems

Kishore Jayabalan, director of the Acton Insitute’s Rome office – Istituto Acton –  has issued the following statement today regarding Pope Francis’s much-awaited enviromental encyclical Laudato Si’. Among other things, Jayabalan notes: “[Francis] seems to blame markets, over-consumption and especially finance, rather than human sin, for all our environmental problems.” Continue Reading...