The visiting professor from Ohio State University took time to answer these five questions:

Q. What kind of prism do you use to look at the globalization issue for Catholics and Muslims, and the problems and successes both share?

Muslim. They're either quite well off or not well off at all.

Q. You've mapped countries that were predominantly either Catholic or Muslim to see how they did on their goals, such as improving literacy throughout the world, especially for girls. What did you find?

A. I went through the text I did know, where there are specific religious directives about treatment of women/girls, the importance of education and taking care of others, etc. What I found was, those religions, you can actually match them: Both talk about importance of women /girls and educating women.

Q. Are they really equally matched?

A. Well, we don't rank Catholic teachings over Muslim. One teaching of Islam is that a mother is a school; if she's educated, then a whole people are educated. When you go to Catholic teachings, the position on the value of educating women is similar. In 1995 at the Beijing Conference, the Holy See's press office (released a statement that said) "access to education on all levels is a focal point in the liberation and promotion of women." So both talk about importance of educating women.

But look at the UNESCO report in 2003-2004 that looks at gender parity in education, to see if enrollment in schools is the same. In some Catholic countries, you'll see it is achieved at the primary level (grammar school), and also at Muslim countries. ... And some countries, both Catholic and Muslim, seem (to) not be coming near it in secondary education (high school).

Q. So they're matched in good ways as well as bad?

A. Exactly. You figure with all these people — there's what, 1.5 billion Catholics and 900 million Sunni Muslims? — if some of this energy could be directed to these kinds of problems, we could make a lot of headway.

Q. Do you see hope for collaboration around these problems or do people remain entrenched in their own camps?

A. I think the most important thing is to bring problems to everyone's attention and make it clear we have all this in common. I'm inspired by evidence where people come together to work for answers, like in tsunami relief. (She also mentions a Sudanese refugee camp run by a Jesuit priest, aided by Protestants and Muslims.) ... You see how the camps dissolve when people come together around solving real social problems. We need to bring those things to light.