Myriam Wijlens and Yeshica Marianne Umaña Calderón release an English-language textbook on child welfare, drawing on a long-running interdisciplinary course at the University of Erfurt. The volume outlines principles of the child’s best interests in ecclesiastical and international contexts and incorporates contributions from global experts involved in child protection.
By Gudrun Sailer
Myriam Wijlens, a canon lawyer from Erfurt, has published a new English-language textbook on child welfare together with her research assistant, Yeshica Marianne Umaña Calderón. “The Wellbeing of the Child: Promotion – Protection – Rights” has been released this Wednesday and is based on a course that Wijlens has been offering at the University of Erfurt for almost 15 years.
The course is one of the most popular seminars in the undergraduate program and has been taught in English since 2021, as the canon lawyer explained to Vatican News. It is aimed not only at theology students but at all enrolled students at the University of Erfurt. Almost 3,000 students have already completed the course. For the English-language version of the course, Wijlens and Umaña Calderón received an award from the German Rectors’ Conference in 2023 for innovative, digital, and international teaching formats.
For the lecture project, some 35 international experts with expertise in international and constitutional law, psychology, medicine, ethics and the digital world, theology, and canon law were recruited as speakers. Twelve of them contributed to the book, including leading representatives of the United Nations, paediatricians, ethicists, and the clergymen Robert Murphy, Deputy Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the UN, and Luis Alí Herrera, Secretary of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors. The canon lawyers from Erfurt presented the work to him this Wednesday in Rome.
The book explains fundamental principles of the best interests of the child in the ecclesiastical and international context and is intended as a contribution to abuse prevention. Wijlens emphasises that theological teaching must create offerings that reach all students and are thus part of the Church’s mission of proclamation. The volume is available in print and is also accessible as an open-access publication:
https://metadata.lit-verlag.de/downloads/91836-9/9783643918369.pdf
