Michael Felix Czerny was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia, on 18 July 1946. His mother's family were Jewish converts to Catholicism: his grandfather died at Terezín and two uncles at Auschwitz. The family emigrated to Canada in 1948. He joined the Jesuits in 1964, was ordained on 9 June 1973, and took a doctorate at the University of Chicago in 1978. In 1979 he co-founded the Jesuit Centre for Social Faith and Justice in Toronto, directing it until 1989. In 1990–91, after the murder of six Jesuits in San Salvador, he took over the direction of the University of Central America's human rights institute (IDHUCA).
From 1992 to 2002 he worked in the Social Justice Secretariat of the Jesuit Curia in Rome, then founded the African Jesuit AIDS Network, directing its work across nearly thirty countries until 2010. After six years assisting Cardinal Turkson at the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Francis made him Under-Secretary of the Migrants and Refugees Section of the new Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development in 2017. He commissioned the Angels Unawares sculpture of migrants and refugees now in St Peter's Square.
On 4 October 2019 Francis consecrated him a bishop personally, and the next day created him Cardinal-Deacon of San Michele Arcangelo a Pietralata. He became Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development in 2022, was sent with humanitarian aid to Ukraine in March 2022, and voted in the conclave of 2025. He retired as prefect on 1 September 2026. His pectoral cross is fashioned from the wood of a migrant boat that reached Lampedusa.
Consequential Quotes
It's not a crisis. It's a series of mismanagements and poor policies and self-interested manipulations.
If you ask me, 'How would you name the wrong track for the conclave?' I would say the idea that unity is the priority.
Major Works & Initiatives
Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development
Ran the dicastery for migrants, ecology and development under two popes.
Angels Unawares
Commissioned the bronze of migrants and refugees unveiled in St Peter's Square in 2019.
African Jesuit AIDS Network
Founded and directed the Jesuits' coordinated response to HIV/AIDS across Africa.
Jesuit Centre for Social Faith and Justice
Co-founded the Toronto centre and was its first director.
Controversies
“They make me shudder” (2025)
Ahead of the 2025 conclave Czerny told The New York Times, of some African cardinals, “they make me shudder,” explaining that some conservatives were promoting African candidates to further an agenda, and calling the “Africa's time has come” line “so, so, so stupid.” Critics read the remarks as dismissive of African cardinals; Czerny framed them as a protest against instrumentalising them.