This year’s US Leaders Special Report reflects the new realities of American public affairs. As one Catholic left the White House after Joe Biden decided to withdraw from seeking a second term of office, then Donald Trump returned to power with another Catholic – JD Vance – as his vice-president, and a cabinet packed with conservatives who wear their faith on their sleeve.
In this final section of the report we’re looking at how from grade school to grad programs, the following Catholic educators unite faith and formation by renewing curricula, strengthening Catholic identity, widening access and caring for minds and souls.
David Bonagura Jr
Professor, St Joseph’s Seminary, New York
David Bonagura Jr is a Cardinal Newman Society Fellow for Eucharistic Education and a member of its new Eucharistic Task Force. This is an initiative designed to promote and improve Eucharistic and liturgical education in Catholic schools. He is also adjunct professor of theology at Catholic Distance University as well as adjunct professor of classical languages at St Joseph’s Seminary, New York.
Mark Bradford
Fellow, Word on Fire Catholic Ministries
Mark Bradford is the Venerable Jerome Lejeune fellow at Bishop Robert Barron’s Word on Fire Ministries, focusing on those with intellectual disabilities. He was director of the Regina Academies network in the Philadelphia area from 2018 to 2023.
Arthur Brooks
Professor, Harvard
Arthur Brooks is the Parker Gilbert Montgomery Professor of the Practice of Public and Nonprofit Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School, and Professor of Management Practice at the Harvard Business School. Previously he was the 11th president of the American Enterprise Institute, He is the author of 13 books and regarded as a dynamic public speaker.
O Carter Snead
Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame
Professor Carter Snead is a superstar academic at Notre Dame where he is the Charles E Rice professor of law as well as a professor of political science. Until last year he was director of the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture and concurrent professor of political science. He is the author of the bestselling ethics book What It Means to be Human: The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics, which The Wall Street Journal called “among the most important works of moral philosophy produced so far in this century”. It is regarded as a milestone in intellectual understanding of the US abortion debate.
Seamus Carey
President, Iona University
Seamus Carey has overseen Iona leap to a ranking of 19th out of 400 colleges rated in the Wall Street Journal’s 2024 Best Colleges Guide for best student experience and a very respectable 66th overall. Not bad for a college that only became a university in 2022. Iona was founded in 1940 by the Christian Brothers, and Carey has masterminded its transition to university status with a new campus in Bronxville, New York.
Tim Collins
President, Walsh University
Tim Collins was appointed the seventh director of Walsh University in 2019. The school was founded by the Brothers of Christian Instruction and its emphasises educating the Catholic “whole person".
John J DeGioia
President, Georgetown University
John J DeGioia is an academic administrator, philosopher, and member of the Order of Malta. He has been the first lay president of Georgetown University in Washington, DC since his appointment in 2001. He was also the first lay president of any Jesuit university in America, and is Georgetown’s longest-serving president. Though he may not identify as a public Catholic leader, DeGioia runs an important liberal-leaning Catholic university.
Dr Felipe Fernández-Armesto
William P Reynolds Professor of History, University of Notre Dame
A leading global Catholic historian, and writer for the Catholic Herald, Fernández-Armesto is a history professor at Notre Dame and an expert on global history, environmental history, the history of exploration and exploitation, and does graduate supervision mainly in the early modern history of colonial societies. He has received many awards, including the World History Association Book Prize. His books include, as editor, the Oxford History of the World. He has written about his concerns that religion is not taken seriously enough on many Catholic campuses, and he has a loyal following from his students.
Mary Ann Glendon
Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Mary Ann Glendon is a law professor and Catholic thought leader who famously declined to receive Notre Dame’s Laetare Medal due to the university inviting Barack Obama as a key speaker. She argued that endorsing Obama was contradictory to the Conference of Catholic Bishops’ 2004 decree that Catholic institutions should not give “awards, honours or platforms” to “those who act in defiance of [Catholic] fundamental moral principles”. She is the recipient of the National Humanities Medal and an expert on bioethics and human rights in international law. She is pro-life and an advocate of unborn rights. Glendon has taught at Boston College Law School and Harvard Law School. From 2008 to 2009, she was the US ambassador to the Holy See. In 2013, Pope Francis named Glendon a member of the pontifical commission of inquiry into the Vatican Bank. She is on the board of directors for First Things. In 2018, she was honoured by Notre Dame’s Center for Ethics and Culture with their Evangelium Vitae medal.
Peter Kilpatrick
President, Catholic University of America
Dr Peter K Kilpatrick became the 16th president of the Catholic University of America in July 2022. He is widely published and holds or shares 12 patents in chemical engineering. He began his career at North Carolina State University and, after 24 years, was recruited by the University of Notre Dame to be its dean of engineering. Since 2018, he has been the provost and vice president for academic affairs for the Illinois Institute of Technology, an institution dedicated to uplifting people of all backgrounds. Combining research and faith is important to Kilpatrick, who became Catholic as an adult.
Peter Kreeft
Professor of Philosophy, Boston College
Peter John Kreeft is a professor of philosophy at Boston College and the King’s College. He converted to Catholicism during his college years after he “discovered in the early Church such Catholic elements as the centrality of the Eucharist, the real presence, devotion to Mary, an insistence on visible unity, and apostolic succession”. He is the author of over 80 books on Christian philosophy, theology and apologetics. He also formulated, together with Ronald K Tacelli, 20 arguments for the existence of God in their Handbook of Christian Apologetics.
Thayne McCulloch
President, Gonzaga University
Thayne McCulloch describes himself as “raised in the church and educated in the Church”. He is head of one of the older Jesuit universities, founded in 1887. At Gonzaga, McCulloch has ensured that Jesuit social values are maintained and describes himself as “deeply impacted” by the teaching of St Ignatius Loyala.
John T McGreevy
Provost, University of Notre Dame
John McGreevy has been the Charles and Jill Fischer Provost of the University of Notre Dame since July 2022. He was formerly the dean of the arts faculty from 2008 until 2018. A graduate of Notre Dame, McGreevy is an acclaimed historian, who is the Francis A McAnaney Professor of History at the university. He is married to Jean McManus, a librarian in Notre Dame’s Hesburgh Libraries. He is the author of Catholicism and American Freedom, among other books on Catholicism.
Stephen Minnis
President, Benedictine College
As president, Stephen Minnis has seen Benedictine College, in Atchinson, Kansas, become a premier sponsor of the National Eucharistic Revival. He is a former pupil at the college and a former assistant district attorney.
David Quigley
Provost and dean, Boston College
Dr David Quigley, an inspirational figure to a generation of Boston College (BC) students, has been provost and dean of faculties since 2014. He is an expert on 19th-century American history, New York urban history and the Civil War, and was awarded BC’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2007. His achievements include scouting and recruiting new faculty members and promoting “environmental studies and Islamic civilisation”.
Patrick Reilly
President and founder, the Cardinal Newman Society
Patrick Reilly is a highly influential figure in US Catholic education as the founder of the Newman Guide to Catholic education. He has appeared on EWTN, Fox News and MSNBC talking about the crisis in US education. Before founding the Newman Society, Reilly served as editor and research fellow at Capital Research Center, executive director of Citizens for Educational Freedom, higher education analyst at the US House of Representatives, media consultant for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, and chairman of American Collegians for Life.
Vincent Rougeau
President, College of the Holy Cross
Vincent Rougeau is a legal scholar who currently serves as president of the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts; he is the first lay and first black president in the history of the university. Rougeau has written extensively on law and religions with a particular focus on Catholic social teaching and the law. His book Christians in the American Empire: Faith and Citizenship in the New World Order came out in 2008. He is a senior fellow at the Centre for Theology and Community in London. In 2023, he denounced the Worcester Diocese’s policy that school staff and students in the diocese are prohibited from using pronouns, clothing or gender-segregated facilities that do not align with their birth sex assigned at birth.
Nick Ripatrazone
Teacher and author
Nick Ripatrazone is an author, editor, critic and a US columnist for the Catholic Herald. He also teaches English at Lenape Valley Regional High School in Stanhope, New Jersey. His voice is increasingly influential in Catholic culture and education today, as he is also the culture editor for Image Journal, a contributing editor at The Millions, and a columnist for Literary Hub. He has written for Rolling Stone, GQ, the Atlantic, the Paris Review and Esquire. He is also the author of Longing for an Absent God and Wild Belief.
Terrence Sawyer
President, Loyola University Maryland
Terrence M Sawyer assumed the role of the 25th president of Loyola University Maryland in January 2022. Before his tenure at Loyola, Sawyer worked as an attorney for the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development. He also practiced civil and criminal law in Baltimore, holding membership in the Maryland State Bar. He and his wife are parishioners at the Church of the Nativity in Timonium, Maryland.
Dr Randall Smith
Professor of Theology, University of St Thomas, Houston
Randall Smith is professor of theology at the University of St Thomas in Houston. He is also a Cardinal Newman Society Fellow for Eucharistic Liturgy and a member of its Eucharistic Education Task Force, which is expanding substantially as part of the the US bishops’ Eucharistic Revival effort.
Jonathan J Sanford
President, University of Dallas
As president of one of the leading Catholic universities that can still call itself properly Catholic, Jonathan Sanford says that his work as president has “brought the many other facets of his career into focus”. He sees his role as “promoting the good work of others” as part of his job. The Newman Guide is an admirer and describes the University of Dallas as having a “national reputation for fidelity to Catholicism and strong academics”.
Julie Sullivan
President, Santa Clara University
Julie Sullivan is the 30th president of Santa Clara University. She is a leader in Catholic higher education and an internationally recognised scholar in economics. She joined Santa Clara in 2022, having previously served as president of the University of St Thomas, where she created dynamic academic programmes and championed social innovation. She is the first layperson and first woman president in Santa Clara University’s history.
Tania Tetlow
President, Fordham University
Tania Tetlow is the 33rd president of Fordham University – the first layperson and woman to hold that office. She had been the 17th president of Loyola University New Orleans, where she was the first woman and layperson to lead Loyola since the Society of Jesus founded it in 1912. A Catholic born in New York and raised in New Orleans, she has deep ties to the Jesuits and to Fordham.
Dr Michael Taylor
Dean of students, Thomas More College of Liberal Arts
Dr Michael Taylor oversees a tiny number of students compared to bigger legacy Catholic colleges, but is getting attention for making Thomas More College – located in a leafy part of New Hampshire with a spacious colonial farmhouse as HQ – a Catholic oasis of intellectual fidelity at a time of rising secularism on campus. He is proud of making the institution a “Catholic island” liberal arts college that stands up for Catholic values against the “passing fancies of the age”.
Dr Bill Thierfelder
President, Belmont Abbey College
A charismatic leader and teacher, Bill Thierfelder is a former Olympic trials athlete and a knight of Malta. In 2023, Belmont Abbey’s faculty was ranked first in undergraduate teaching in the south by US News & World Report. He is in his 20th year as the college’s president.
Photo: graphic by Arcadia
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