Donald Nicholl

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Donald Nicholl (1923-1997) taught university students in history and religious studies at Edinburgh University, Keele University in Staffordshire, and in Cowell College at the University of California, Santa Cruz, before becoming rector of the Tantur Ecumenical Institute for Theological Studies at Jerusalem from 1981 to 1985, and, subsequently, senior research fellow at the Multi-Faith Centre, Selly Oak Colleges, Birmingham.

His published works include Holiness (Seabury, 1981; Pauline Books & Media, 2005), The Beatitude of Truth: Reflections of a Lifetime (Darton, Longman and Todd, 1997), Triumphs of the Spirit in Russia (Darton, Longman and Todd, 1997), A Testing of Hearts (Darton, Longman and Todd, 1998).

In addition to his academic pursuits Donald Nicholl taught church history to the Poor Clares in Aptos, California, and to novices in the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa's order, in London. More informally he conducted a class in the "Penny University" at the Caffe Pergolesi in Santa Cruz, reading through Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.

Alongside his wife Dorothy Nicholl, he was active in the Co-workers of Mother Teresa. A regular contributor to The Tablet, a compassionate intelligence shone through his articles, providing a source of relief in conservative times and of compassionate impartiality in times of conflict. Perhaps his skill in listening respectfully to wildly variant points of view, acknowledging authentic distinctives unobscured by mollifying generalizations, was most widely known in his work at Tantur - but it was certainly experienced by his students as well.