Articles by George Weigel

About George Weigel
George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington's Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies. He is the author of over twenty books, including Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II (1999), The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II—The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy (2010), and The Irony of Modern Catholic History: How the Church Rediscovered Itself and Challenged the Modern World to Reform. His most recent books are 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 (Ignatius, 2021), and To Sanctify the World: The Vital Legacy of Vatican II (Basic Books, 2022).
Xing
The Dispatch

Centesimus Annus at 35

May 6, 2026 George Weigel 6

Thirty-five years ago, Pope John Paul II issued his most developed social encyclical, Centesimus Annus; its title signaled the author’s intention to honor the centenary of Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical, Rerum Novarum, which launched the modern papal […]

The Dispatch

Via Crucis, 2026

April 1, 2026 George Weigel 4

The Way of the Cross—and the third, seventh, and ninth stations in particular—has been an especially appropriate Lenten devotion this year. Every day, it seems, some new craziness erupts in the world, the country, or […]

The Dispatch

Bishop William Murphy Remembered

March 30, 2026 George Weigel 4

William Francis Murphy, the emeritus bishop of Rockville Centre who died on March 26 at age 85, was not a household name in American Catholicism. He did, however, have a considerable impact on both the […]