George Weigel
Distinguished Senior Fellow and William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies
George Weigel, Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is a Catholic theologian and one of America’s leading public intellectuals. He holds EPPC’s William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.
George Weigel, Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is a Catholic theologian and one of America’s leading public intellectuals. He holds EPPC’s William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.
From 1989 through June 1996, Mr. Weigel was president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he led a wide-ranging, ecumenical and inter-religious program of research and publication on foreign and domestic policy issues.
Mr. Weigel is perhaps best known for his widely translated and internationally acclaimed two-volume biography of Pope St. John Paul II: the New York Times bestseller, Witness to Hope (1999), and its sequel, The End and the Beginning (2010). In 2017, Weigel published a memoir of the experiences that led to his work as a papal biographer: Lessons in Hope — My Unexpected Life with St. John Paul II.
George Weigel is the author or editor of more than thirty other books, many of which have been translated into other languages. Among the most recent are Evangelical Catholicism: Deep Reform in the 21st-Century Church (2013); Roman Pilgrimage: The Station Churches (2013); Letters to a Young Catholic (2015); The Fragility of Order: Catholic Reflections on Turbulent Times (2018); The Next Pope: The Office of Peter and a Church in Mission (2020);Not Forgotten: Elegies for, and Reminiscences of, a Diverse Cast of Characters, Most of Them Admirable (2021); and To Sanctify the World: The Vital Legacy of Vatican II (2022). His essays, op-ed columns, and reviews appear regularly in major opinion journals and newspapers across the United States. A frequent guest on television and radio, he is also Senior Vatican Analyst for NBC News. His weekly column, “The Catholic Difference,” is syndicated to eighty-five newspapers and magazines in seven countries.
Mr. Weigel received a B.A. from St. Mary’s Seminary and University in Baltimore and an M.A. from the University of St. Michael’s College, Toronto. He is the recipient of nineteen honorary doctorates in fields including divinity, philosophy, law, and social science, and has been awarded the Papal Cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice, Poland’s Gloria Artis Gold Medal, and Lithuania’s Diplomacy Star.
Solidarity with a Martyr Church
George Weigel
For centuries, many Polish Catholic leaders bent every effort to “Latinize” the Greek Catholics in terms of liturgy, church discipline, and governance.
Syndicated Column / September 13, 2023
A Work of Biblical Proportions
George Weigel
REVIEW: ‘The Word: How We Translate the Bible—and Why It Matters’ by John Barton
Washington Free Beacon / September 10, 2023
Living Communio in Cracow
George Weigel
For displaying the joy of the Gospel in their own lives is far more likely to win others for Christ, or back to Christ, than the snarky tweets in which some of their peers (and some of their elders who ought to know better) regularly indulge.
Syndicated Column / September 6, 2023
True and False Reconciliation
George Weigel
Over more than 500 days of war, Major Archbishop Shevchuk has confronted a horrific situation with a resolve born of deep faith—the Christocentric, cruciform faith that animates his pastoral outreach to the war’s victims.
Syndicated Column / August 30, 2023
Archbishop Fernández and the Learning Curve
George Weigel
Archbishop Fernández is no Joseph Ratzinger in either theological heft or in his relationship to the pope he will serve.
Articles
Syndicated Column / August 23, 2023
The Vatican’s China Deal Unravels Further
George Weigel
Has the Holy See learned nothing from the behavior of totalitarian regimes throughout history, all of which, without exception, have sought to subordinate Christian communities to regime ideology, be that Nazism, Leninism, or “Xi Jinping Thought”?
First Things / August 16, 2023
Just War, Just Peace, and Ukraine
George Weigel
Because if war is not politics-by-other-means—if the use of armed force is not directed to the restoration or establishment of the peace of freedom, justice, and order—then war is simply brigandage and butchery.
First Things / August 9, 2023
From Westerplatte To Lisbon . . . And Everywhere Else
George Weigel
John Paul II did not pander to the young. He understood from experience that deep within the youthful heart is a yearning for meaning, for nobility, for greatness.
Articles
Syndicated Column / August 2, 2023
Looking For the Lord Jesus in Lisbon
George Weigel
What bishop Aguiar did not explain was why fulfilling the Great Commission through evangelization and catechesis—hitherto understood to be essential components of any World Youth Day—was “proselytism.”
Articles
Syndicated Column / July 26, 2023
Synodality and Sanctity
George Weigel
If October’s Synod on Synodality is going to contribute to the evangelization of a world sorely in need of holiness, then the Synod is going to have to take the saints far more seriously than its Working Document does.
Articles
Syndicated Column / July 19, 2023
The “Synodal Process”: Talking a New Church into Being?
George Weigel
Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, S.J., Synod-2023’s relator general, said that the Synod’s purpose was not changing Catholic teaching but “listening.” To which one must ask, “listening to what end”?
Articles
Syndicated Column / July 12, 2023
