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.
The Reagan Initiative
George Weigel
Ten years after Douglas’s book, President Ronald Reagan gave the new thinking real political impetus when he addressed the British…
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Syndicated Column / October 1, 1993
A Private/Public Partnership
George Weigel
The National Endowment for Democracy is not an agency of the federal government; it differs in that crucial respect from…
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Syndicated Column / October 1, 1993
The NED Difference
George Weigel
Four characteristics mark the Endowment as a unique venture in private/public cooperation on behalf of the democratic cause through out…
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Syndicated Column / October 1, 1993
Works Built on Faith
George Weigel
In the Senate debate over a proposal to kill the Endowment, a senator who, in charity, shall remain nameless here…
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Syndicated Column / October 1, 1993
Challenging the Disinformation/Misinformation Campaign
George Weigel
During the House and Senate debates on NED’S future, a number of misconceptions about the Endowment’s program and procedures (some…
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Syndicated Column / October 1, 1993
The New Human Rights Debate
George Weigel
In spite of, or perhaps because of, the horrors of the twentieth century, the cause of “human rights” has become…
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Syndicated Column / August 1, 1993
A Troublesome Declaration
George Weigel
That staying power derived in part from the follies committed by Eleanor Roosevelt when she led the drafting of the…
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Syndicated Column / August 1, 1993
An American Argument, a European Revolution
George Weigel
These definitional arguments—and the ways in which they were manipulated by dictators of all stripes (but pre-eminently by Communists and…
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Syndicated Column / August 1, 1993
The Bangkok Conspirators
George Weigel
The bad guys at Vienna were not exactly shy about what they were up to. Two months before the Vienna…
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Syndicated Column / August 1, 1993
Getting It Less-Than-Half Right
George Weigel
The Bangkok Declaration was, among other things, a gauntlet thrown down before the Clinton administration. The Vienna Conference would be…
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Syndicated Column / August 1, 1993