Lead Kindly Light: the Story of a Saint | George Weigel

This talk was given as part of the Thomistic Institute Conference "Newman the Prophet: A Saint for Our Times" which was part of the official program for the canonization weekend of John Henry Cardinal Newman and held at the Angelicum in Rome on October 12 2019. Introduction by Fr. Thomas Joseph White. 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 papal biography: Lessons in Hope — My Unexpected Life with St. John Paul II. George Weigel is the author of more than twenty other books, including The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God (2005); Evangelical Catholicism: Deep Reform in the 21st-Century Church (2013); Roman Pilgrimage: The Station Churches (2013); Letters to a Young Catholic (2015); and The Fragility of Order: Catholic Reflections on Turbulent Times (2018). 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.