Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J. is currently the Laurence J. McGinley Professor of Religion and Society at Fordham University. An internationally known author and lecturer, he is the son of John Foster Dulles, former US Secretary of State, and Janet Pomeroy Avery Dulles. After graduating from Harvard College and while a student at the Law School, he converted to Catholicism at St. Paul's Church in Cambridge, Massachusets, on November 26, 1940. The autobiographical account of his conversion, A Testimonial to Grace, is a spiritual classic. After spending a year and a half at Harvard Law School, he served in intelligence in the Naval Reserve and was decorated with the "Croix de Guerre" in 1945 for his work in communication with the French Navy. Later in 1945, he contracted polio in Italy. He joined the Jesuits in 1946 and was ordained a priest for the Jesuits in 1956. He joined the faculty of Fordham University in 1951 as a philosophy professor and has also taught at Woodstock College and Catholic University of America. He was a member of the International Theological Commission from 1991 to 1997 and has held 15 visiting professorships and numerous positions in theological organizations. He has received 21 honorary doctorates and at age 82, is an internationally known author and lecturer having written 21 books and more than 650 articles, essays, and reviews. Many of these literary works interpret and communicate the messages of Vatican II.

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