Ratzinger Prize Winner Hailed by Bishops, Fellow Theologians for ‘Scholarship, Teaching, and Faithful Service’

Ratzinger Prize Winner Hailed by Bishops, Fellow Theologians for ‘Scholarship, Teaching, and Faithful Service’

Notre Dame’s John Cavadini celebrated as a witness to ‘the ecclesial vocation of the theologian.’

Bishops and fellow theologians this week praised the life and legacy of John Cavadini, a University of Notre Dame theologian who was announced on Tuesday as the recipient of the 2026 Ratzinger Prize, a prestigious award named for the late Pope Benedict XVI and commonly referred to as the “Nobel Prize of Theology.”

Cavadini led the McGrath Institute for Church Life (MICL) at Notre Dame from 2000 until earlier this year, establishing the institute as a leading center for Catholic thought in the United States. Cavadini is also credited with transforming Notre Dame’s theology department, which he led from 1997 to 2010, revitalizing the program’s Catholic identity while also elevating its academic standing.

Bishop Kevin Rhoades of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, which encompasses Notre Dame, said in a statement to the Register that Cavadini is an “outstanding theologian who exemplifies the ecclesial vocation of the theologian.”

“His scholarship, teaching, and faithful service have enriched the life of the Church at Notre Dame, in the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, and beyond,” said Bishop Rhoades. The bishop also cited Cavadini’s work as consultant for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine and as a Benedict XVI-appointed member of the International Theological Commission.

Cavadini will receive the Ratzinger Prize, which was established in 2011 and has just 32 laureates worldwide, from Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican on Dec. 19.

“I am personally grateful not only for John’s excellent theological work, but also for his example of fidelity and love for the Lord and His Church,” added Bishop Rhoades. “The Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend rejoices with him in this wonderful recognition of his vocation and work.”

Thinking With the Fathers

A prolific author, Cavadini has been a professor in Notre Dame’s department of theology since 1990. His studies focus mainly on patristics — the theology and thought of the Fathers of the Church — with a particular focus on St. Augustine.

Cyril O’Regan, professor emeritus of theology at Notre Dame and a previous recipient of the Ratzinger Prize, told the Register he is “delighted that my dear friend has received this extraordinary recognition.”

“John is a wonderful Patristic scholar who had inspired an entire generation of doctoral students to think with the Fathers,” O’Regan said by email. “Nowhere in scholarship do we find an Augustine so fresh, so present, so strange, so demanding and so compelling. And rarely have the gifts of leadership in the Church and genius for program building synced so well with scholarship at once intellectually and spiritually penetrating.”

Christopher Kaczor, president of the American Catholic Philosophical Association and professor of philosophy at Loyola Marymount University, told the Register by email that he too was delighted to hear the news about Cavadini’s honor.

“Despite heavy burdens as an administrator, Cavadini has worked tirelessly as a scholar and interpreter of Augustine and Origen, informing readers around the world,” Kaczor said.

“His insightful scholarship informs his public theology, generously sharing the fruits of his contemplation with the wider Church,” he added. “Like Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict, Cavadini models in both scholarship and service a life given in love to the People of God.”

Impact at Notre Dame

One critical reaction to Cavadini’s reception of the award came from journalist Michael Haynes. Writing for The Catholic Herald, he noted that the Notre Dame scholar had written a 2022 critique of Benedict XVI’s liberalizing of the traditional Latin Mass in his 2007 document Summorum Pontificum.

Other traditionalist voices, however, pushed back, suggesting that one could disagree with Cavadini’s stance on Summorum Pontificum while also recognizing both his worthiness to receive the Ratzinger Prize and his larger impact.

“Cavadini’s fidelity to the Church made Notre Dame and its theology department enormously better,” wrote John Gerardi, the head of Right to Life of Central California and a Notre Dame alumnus, on social media.

Fellow scholars from Notre Dame echoed this perspective, emphasizing Cavadini’s contribution to fostering an intellectually rigorous and authentically Catholic environment within Notre Dame’s theology department, something the school was not known for prior to Cavadini taking the helm.

“John Cavadini brought the [theology] department of Notre Dame out of an absolute morass of scandal and heresy to a true community of ‘Faith seeking understanding’ — with hundreds of undergraduate [t]heology majors who love the Church,” commented Gabriel Said Reynolds, a professor of theology and Islamic studies at Notre Dame, on social media.

“Ask anyone around ND about his fidelity to the Church — and about the attacks he has endured from folks here opposed to our Catholic identity.”

Rick Garnett, a Notre Dame law professor, added on social media that he sees Cavadini as “really, the great hero in the story of Notre Dame as a Catholic university.”

Cavadini’s impact was also celebrated by Catholic voices well beyond Notre Dame’s northern Indiana campus.

“One of the reasons I feel close to Notre Dame, even though I’m not an alum, is because the work and welcome of people like John Cavadini and MICL” wrote Diocese of Dallas priest Father Joshua Whitfield on social media. He added that Cavadini and the institute he led “have helped make Our Lady’s University a servant of the entire Church.”

For his own part, Cavadini said in a statement accompanying the award announcement that he has sought to live out his vocation as a theologian “following the example of Origen of Alexandria, a third-century theologian, who repeatedly declared that, as a theologian, he wished to be a vir ecclesiasticus, a man of the Church.”

“At Notre Dame, I have been able to live out my vocation as a man of the Church and, at the same time, as a man of the academy,” said Cavadini. “I am particularly grateful for this award because it recognizes these two aspects of my vocation as a theologian.”

- Keywords:

- catholic theology

- theologians

- john cavadini