Hometown Perry, Iowa invites you to attend the inaugural lecture in the Emil Natalle Lecture Series.  Father Justo Lacunza-Balda, Director of the Pontifical Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies, will speak on Muslim-Christian dialogue on Thursday, May 10, 2007, at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church, 7075 Ashworth Road, West Des Moines, Iowa.   The lecture is free, but seating is limited.  Contact Hometown Perry, Iowa for tickets. The lecture series honors Emil Keith Natalle of Perry.  Natalle, the son of an Italian immigrant, earned a degree in journalism from the University of Illinois and was drafted into the Army in August 1942.  He served as a combat surgical technician, first in North Africa and then in Europe.  On D-Day, his surgical paratroop team parachuted into combat as part of the Army’s First Airborne Surgical team.  In 1944 they were captured and taken prisoner by the Germans at Bastogne.  They were finally liberated by the Americans on April 9, 1945.  Natalle’s post-military career took him and his wife, Lauraine, to Japan, Russia, Newfoundland, and other places where he worked for the U.S. government running schools on American military bases. It is appropriate that this lecture series honors Emil Natalle, a man of the world who found a home in small-town Iowa.  The threads of world history run through many Perry residents’ stories.  Personal stories of family, faith, work, education and loss put the grand sweep of history on a relatable human level.   The Emil Natalle lecture series will create a forum to address questions about how people of different backgrounds, ethnicities and faiths come to live together.  Ultimately, the series will feature two lectures per year on topics related to ethnic groups and religion in rural America. The first speaker in the series, Father Justo Lacunza-Balda, has studied and taught Islamic Studies for more than thirty years.  Born in Pamplona, Spain, Fr. Lacunza-Balda completed his doctoral work at the University of London and has also served as editor of Encounter:  Documents for Muslim-Christian Understanding.  He has done field research on Islam in thirty-three countries.  He is currently on sabbatical and continues his research in the field of Muslim-Christian dialogue and Islamic Studies. The history between Christians and Muslims has been long, and tense, dating back to the medieval Crusades and even earlier. Today, in many parts of the world, people of both faiths still feel that tension, and yet must find a way to live in closer proximity than ever.  In a 2005 Washington Post article, Rev. Augustine DiNoia, the second-ranking official in the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, commented that the relationship between Catholicism and other religions was perhaps the most crucial issue facing the church today:  “The fundamental problem is how to value another religion without devaluing your own.”  Father Lacunza-Balda will address such questions in his lecture; as he has said, “Is there any other way except the road of dialogue?”