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.
Past and Future
George Weigel
From the moment the Great Jubilee of 2000 was announced in the 1994 apostolic letter, Tertio Millennio Adveniente [The Coming Third…
Uncategorized
Syndicated Column / March 29, 2001
Lincoln in Rome
George Weigel
On February 24, as the newly-created Cardinal Avery Dulles, S.J., tall and craggy of face, processed up the aisle of…
Uncategorized
Syndicated Column / March 22, 2001
Words for Weddings
George Weigel
Serving weddings was always a prize assignment in pre-conciliar Catholicism, although not necessarily for the noblest of reasons. Assuming a…
Uncategorized
Syndicated Column / March 15, 2001
Martyrdom Today
George Weigel
As Pope John Paul II has relentlessly reminded the Church for twenty-two years, we live in the greatest age of…
Uncategorized
Syndicated Column / March 8, 2001
Revisiting Franz Werfel
George Weigel
A few months ago, facing a fifteen-hour flight from Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia, I called a friend, a distinguished…
Uncategorized
Syndicated Column / March 1, 2001
Whose Fringe? What Mainstream?
George Weigel
The Ashcroft confirmation hearings in January reinforced the intuition that virtually all American politics since the Cold War has become…
Uncategorized
Syndicated Column / February 22, 2001
Election Numbers Once More
George Weigel
John Green of the University of Akron may know as much about which Americans vote for which candidates and why…
Uncategorized
Syndicated Column / February 15, 2001
And the Wall Came Tumbling Down
George Weigel
Thank you for the invitation to participate in this 125th anniversary lecture series on “Faith, Freedom, and the Future.” That…
Uncategorized
Syndicated Column / February 15, 2001
The Problem of the Self-Worshiping Community
George Weigel
In his recently published book, The Spirit of the Liturgy, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger offers an instructive commentary on the famous…
Uncategorized
Syndicated Column / February 8, 2001
Changing the Guard at the U.S. Embassy-Vatican
George Weigel
Ever since formal diplomatic relations at the ambassadorial level were established between the United States and the Holy See in…
Uncategorized
Syndicated Column / February 1, 2001