After his meeting in Puebla, Mexico, as a member of the Papal Expert Group in economics, Father Felix Raj, the principal of St. Xavier’s College, visited the universities of San Francisco and Berkeley last month.

He delivered a lecture at Berkeley on the ‘Frontiers of Jesuit Higher Education in India’ and was honoured with two certificates of recognition — one from the California State Assembly, handed over by Assembly members Kansen Chu and Bill Luke, and the other from Bill Harrison, the mayor of the City of Fremont — at a gathering attended by a large number of Xaverians and non-Xaverians, hosted by Rahul Roy, a San Francisco-based Indian industrialist.

Felix Raj also inaugurated the SXC Foundation, a fundraising initiative, and attended its first meeting in Los Angeles with Firdausul Hasan, the honorary secretary of the St. Xavier’s College Calcutta Alumni Association, at the residence of Chanda Zaveri, the Calcutta girl who is now a millionaire American entrepreneur. Chanda and the team of Xaverians have promised to take this project forward and organise a big event on October 10, 2015, in Los Angeles.

On their way back, Felix Raj and Hasan stopped over in Dubai to meet local members of the Xaverian alumni chapter.