June 16, 2026
12 p.m. – 1 p.m. (Eastern Time)
Online
Hosted by the Centre for Safeguarding Minors and Vulnerable Adults (CPCS). This free webinar is offered online and in English only.
Join us for an engaging conversation with Dr. Marcia J. Bunge, contributor to the interdisciplinary volume edited by Myriam Wijlens and Yeshica Marianne Umaña Calderón emerging from the course “The Wellbeing of the Child. Protection—Promotion—Rights”. Since 2021, the course has brought together approximately 35 scholars from diverse disciplines, with 14 contributing to the publication.
Although many strides have been made over the past 100 years regarding children’s rights and child-focused research, children worldwide still face a host of ongoing and newly emerging challenges. How can we build on these strides and more consistently and effectively advance efforts on behalf of children? Bunge emphasizes that adults often hold narrow assumptions about children that negatively affect the way they treat them. She claims that we all can strengthen our commitments to children and more effectively help all children thrive by re-examining our assumptions and cultivating robust and multi-dimensional conceptions of children that honor their full humanity. She illustrates the significance of this claim by outlining one example of a robust Christian conception of children—a “theology of childhood”—and its implications for strengthening Christian commitments to children and child advocacy. By highlighting one example of a robust understanding of children, she prompts all people—regardless of their religious or secular worldviews, academic disciplines, professions, or nationalities—to reflect on how they might cultivate stronger conceptions of children in their contexts and thereby strengthen their commitments to them.
Interviewed by Professor Myriam Wijlens.
Dr. Marcia J. Bunge
Chapter author: Honoring the Full Humanity of Children: Lessons from Robust Theologies of Childhood for Child Protection and Well-being
Marcia J. Bunge, Ph.D., is Professor of Religion and holds the Drell and Adeline Bernhardson Distinguished Endowed Chair at Gustavus Adolphus College (USA) and serves as an Extraordinary Research Professor at North-West University (South Africa). She earned her Ph.D. in Theology from the University of Chicago, and her scholarship addresses a wide range of topics, including spiritual life and children. She has published articles and six books on conceptions of and commitments to children in world religions, including The Child in Christian Thought (Eerdmans, 2001) and The Child in the Bible (Eerdmans, 2008). Her most recent book, Child Theology: Diverse Methods and Global Perspectives (Orbis Books, 2021), brings together Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox theologians from around the world who re-examine central Christian doctrines and practices with attention to children. Bunge also speaks and writes widely on child protection, education, and nurturing spiritual life in families and faith communities. As a theologian, scholar, and child advocate, Bunge has participated in numerous inter-religious and interdisciplinary initiatives and been invited to contribute to academic projects and advocacy efforts on six continents.
Professor Myriam Wijlens
Interviewer & co-editor of The Wellbeing of the Child
Prof. Myriam Wijlens is a Dutch theologian and Ordinary Professor of Canon Law at the University of Erfurt in Germany. She completed her doctorate in canon law at Saint Paul University in Ottawa. Professor Wijlens has been involved in allegations of child abuse by conducting more than 100 preliminary canonical investigations. She served as a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors (2018–2022). For this Commission she organized one conference on “Balancing Transparency and Confidentiality” (2019) and one on the Rights of Victims in Penal Procedures (2021). She published the proceedings of the latter with archbishop Charles Scicluna. In 2010 she took the initiative to teach each semester an interdisciplinary course on the wellbeing of the child, initially in German only. Because of its success her academic assistant Yeshica Marianne Umaña Calderón has been teaching the course in English since 2021. Meanwhile approximately 3,000 students have attended the courses. In 2025 canon lawyers edited a book entitled The Wellbeing of the Child: Protection – Promotion – Rights (Münster: Lit, 2025). Professor Wijlens also served as a consultor to the Synod on Synodality (2021–2026) and is a member of the Commission for the Reform of Canon Law of the Synod. She is the co-moderator of the “Peter and Paul Seminar” which attends to reforms in canon law based on Vatican II.
About the book: The Wellbeing of the Child – Promotion, Protection, Rights
The wellbeing of children, with a focus on their rights, protection, and participation, requires an interdisciplinary approach, including international and constitutional law, ethics, psychology, medicine, theology and canon law.
Leading experts from UN institutions, academic and ecclesial settings, as well as professional practice, address topics ranging from the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, truth mechanisms and safeguards against repeated cases of systematic abuse, child participation in public decision-making, ethical concerns surrounding artificial intelligence, psychological and medical implications of COVID, as well as current safeguarding provisions, including within the Catholic Church.
“The global effort to create a world that respects children’s rights remains work in progress and is in fact in need of more critical thought leadership from multiple disciplines. The collections in this book make a significant contribution to address this need.”
— Benyam Dawit Mezmur, member and former chairperson of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child
Editors: Myriam Wijlens (Professor of Canon Law, University of Erfurt; former member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors) and Yeshica Marianne Umaña Calderón (Academic Research Assistant at the Chair of Canon Law, University of Erfurt).
The book is available for purchase and Open Access at lit-verlag.de.
