George M. Smiga is a native of Cleveland, Ohio.  He graduated for Borromeo College of Ohio in 1971 with a B. A. in English Literature.  In 1975 he received a Master of Divinity Degree from St. Mary Seminary and was ordained as a priest for the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland.  From 1975-81 he served as associate pastor of St. Clare parish in Lyndhurst, Ohio, a parish in the eastern suburbs of Cleveland which consisted of almost 3,000 households.

In 1981 he began studies in Rome, Italy at the Pontifical Gregorian University.  This led to a License in Theology (Magna cum Laude) in 1983 and a Doctorate in Sacred Theology (Summa cum Laude) with a specialization in Biblical Theology in 1985.  His doctoral dissertation was Language, Experience, and Theology: The Argumentation of Galatians 3:6-4:7 in Light of the Literary Form of the Letter.

From 1985 to 1991 he served as a full-time member of the scripture department of St. Mary Seminary and Graduate School of Theology, Wickliffe Ohio, teaching a full range of classes in Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament.
           
Presently he serves on the scripture and homiletic faculties of St. Mary Seminary and Graduate School of Theology.  He is an active member of the Catholic Biblical Association and the Eastern Great Lakes Biblical Society and is a board member at The Cleveland Ecumenical Institute for Religious Studies where since 1992 he has taught a yearly eight-week course on the bible, religious thought, and their cultural evolution.  Since 1991 he has served as the pastor of St. Noel Catholic Church in a parish of 1500 households in Willoughby Hills, Ohio.

Since 1997 he has been a regular contributor to The Faith Connection which is published by RCL. Since July 2009 he has written a monthly scriptural column in Living with Christ, a journal with 85,000 subscribers which deals with issues in theology and faith. 

In the fall of 2009 he held The Walter and Mary Tuohy Chair of Interreligious Studies at John Carroll University in Cleveland, delivering a series of lectures entitled Tracing the Invisible God: A Shared Faith for Jews and Christians.
In the spring of 2011 he broke new ground in his professional career by connecting his expertise in biblical theology to the tradition of Western Art. He presented four public lectures in association with the Cardinal Suenens Center at John Carroll University which were entitled: The Gospels and Caravaggio: A Dialogue of Text and Light.

His effort to relate biblical texts to the visual representations of Caravaggio demonstrated that the power of the Inspired Word can be enhanced as it is reflected in artistic forms and symbols.

In addition to his research, essayistic argumentation, and audiovisual presentations of western artistic and cultural symbols, Dr. Smiga has centered his academic research in the area of Jewish-Christian issues of the New Testament.  In addition to speaking nationally in this area, he has authored Pain and Polemic: Anti-Judaism in the Gospels (1992) and The Gospel of John Set Free: Preaching without Anti-Judaism (2008) both by Paulist Press.  He has contributed to two collections: Pondering the Passion: What’s at Stake for Christians and Jews (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004) and The Gospel According to Mel Gibson, Timothy Beal (ed.) (University of Chicago Press, 2006).

Dr. Smiga was introduced to Jack Craciun by his life-long friend Mark DeJohn. In the discussions which followed, it became clear that the mission of the ITM Group to encourage cultural exchange and mutual respect among nations was in strong alignment with his own ministry and scholarship. Throughout his years of scholarly writing and public lectures Dr. Smiga has not only clearly articulated  the significance of the Christian message as it is revealed in the Bible but has engaged that message with non-Christian traditions and Western cultural symbols outside of the biblical text.  

By forming a Strategic Alliance with ITM Dr. Smiga is committed to employ his expertise in inter-faith dialogue and cultural symbolism and his access to global resources to relate the Christian world-view to Eastern culture, so that misunderstanding may be healed and peace and cooperation nourished between the Christian West and China.