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.

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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 ninety-one newspapers and magazines in five countries.

Mr. Weigel received a B.A. (Philosophy) from St. Mary’s Seminary and University in Baltimore, an M.A. (Theology) from the University of St. Michael’s College, Toronto, and is the recipient of nineteen honorary doctorates. In 2024 he was decorated with the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, and has also been awarded the Papal Cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice, the Lithuanian Diplomacy Star, and the Gloria Artis Gold Medal of Poland’s Ministry of Culture.

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The Prophetic Tommy Lascelles

George Weigel

His 20th-century observations about the character of King Edward VIII are newly relevant in the Washington, D.C., of the 21st.

Articles

National Review Online / April 5, 2025

Pope St. John Paul II, Doctor of the Church?

George Weigel

The Catholic Church is prudently patient in awarding the title “Doctor of the Church” to her greatest teachers. However luminous…

Articles

Syndicated Column / April 2, 2025

Against the Politics of Grievance

George Weigel

“Woke,” shorthand for what was once known as “political correctness,” helped fuel a grievance-based progressive politics that did immense damage…

Articles

Syndicated Column / March 26, 2025

The Henry J. Hyde Federal Building, Please

George Weigel

DuPage County is one of the collar counties bordering Chicago. For years, it had the great good sense to send…

Articles

Syndicated Column / March 19, 2025

Demythologizing Some Recent Catholic History

George Weigel

The National Catholic Reporter recently saw fit to mark Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s seventy-fifth birthday by perpetuating two myths—falsehoods, really—about events in contemporary…

Articles

Syndicated Column / March 12, 2025

Lent and the Purification of Memory

George Weigel

On December 20, 2002, I was at lunch in the papal apartment when the wide-ranging conversation John Paul II always…

Articles

Syndicated Column / March 5, 2025

A People Defined by Sacrifice

George Weigel

Those who wish to be peacemakers on the world stage should read the brave words of the bishops of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, who embody Catholic episcopal leadership at its noblest.

Articles

National Catholic Register / March 4, 2025

Putting Americans in Iron Lungs Again?

George Weigel

The nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services was transactional: RFK…

Articles

Syndicated Column / February 26, 2025

Cathedrals and Us

George Weigel

The Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul in the nation’s capital is a magnificent neo-Gothic structure, based on…

Articles

Syndicated Column / February 19, 2025

Russia’s Sacrilegious War on Ukraine 

George Weigel

Today’s Russian Orthodox leadership is a theological, moral, and pastoral train wreck. U.S. foreign policy can’t fix that. Nonetheless, those…

Articles

Syndicated Column / February 12, 2025

Manners, Methods, and Greatness

George Weigel

Browsing Footprints in Time, the memoirs of Winston Churchill’s longtime private secretary, John Colville, I found a tale from eighty years ago…

Articles

Syndicated Column / February 5, 2025

Catholics, Hippocrates, and Reforming American Medicine

George Weigel

I am the odd man out in a family of medical folk. My maternal grandfather was a physician; his daughter,…

Articles

Syndicated Column / January 29, 2025