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 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.

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The MAD Magazine Caricature of U.S. Catholicism

George Weigel

2024 will see an intensifying debate over the complex legacy of Francis’s pontificate.

Syndicated Column / January 3, 2024

Praying For Our Country With John Carroll

George Weigel

In 1791 Bishop Carroll convoked a diocesan synod, and on November 10 of that year, the synod adopted a prayer for the civil authorities that Carroll had composed.

Syndicated Column / December 27, 2023

Christmas in a Time of War

George Weigel

The God of the Bible cannot command the murder he forbade in the Ten Commandments, because the God of the Bible is a God of reason, and reason cannot contradict itself.

Syndicated Column / December 20, 2023

German Catholicism: On the Brink or at the Cutting Edge?

George Weigel

Why is “salvation” in quotation marks in the pope’s letter?

Syndicated Column / December 13, 2023

When Docs Play Deities

George Weigel

Being the object of misplaced worship by the British public seems to have convinced NHS doctors that they are, in fact, God.

Syndicated Column / November 29, 2023

A “Synodal Reform” of the Papal Conclave?

George Weigel

As Americans celebrate Thanksgiving Day on November 23, my Catholic fellow citizens might take a moment to give thanks for a 120-year-old apostolic constitution that virtually no one remembers—but that is re-asserting its relevance in this troubled Catholic moment.

Syndicated Column / November 22, 2023

In Support of Jimmy Lai

George Weigel

As chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, John Lee is the principal enforcer of the Chinese communist regime’s ever-tightening chokehold on his city’s liberties.

Syndicated Column / November 15, 2023

Letters from the Synod—2023: Special Edition 4

Xavier Rynne II

Reports and Commentary, from Rome and Elsewhere, on the Synod on Synodality: “For a Synodal Church—Communion, Participation, Mission”

First Things / November 11, 2023

The Grave Sin of Jew-Hatred

George Weigel

“It couldn’t happen again,” too many say; “the world learned its lesson in the Great War.”

Syndicated Column / November 8, 2023

All Saints, All Souls, and Synod-2023

George Weigel

“Resurrection” was another word notably absent in the synodal discussions described to me by those participating in them.

Syndicated Column / November 1, 2023

The Synod on Synodality at the Halfway Point

George Weigel

The Synod on Synodality meeting this month is the first of a two-part synodal assembly; the second session is scheduled to meet a year from now, in October 2024.

Syndicated Column / October 25, 2023

Questions to Enliven Synod-2023

George Weigel

The first session of the “Synod on Synodality,” currently meeting in Rome, is slated to be followed by a second such month-long affair in October 2024.

Syndicated Column / October 18, 2023