Executive director, Regina Academies
Mark Bradford, who lives in Pennsylvania, is the executive director of the Regina Academies, a network of Philadelphia-area schools offering Catholic classical education for students from pre-kindergarten to grade 12. Bradford worked for ten years at St Charles Borromeo Seminary and then served as headmaster of a parent-founded, Catholic K-12 classical academy in western Pennsylvania.
President Georgetown University
John J DeGioia, 65, 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. He is currently Georgetown’s longest-serving president. In 1994, he married his wife Theresa at Holy Trinity Church in a ceremony presided over by DeGioia’s uncle, John Begley, a Jesuit priest. Though he may not identify as a public Catholic leader, DeGioia is a Catholic running an important liberal-leaning Catholic university.
Professor of law, Harvard Law School
Mary Ann Glendon is a highly influential Catholic thought leader who famously declined to receive Notre Dame’s Laetare Medal on account of the university inviting Barack Obama as key speaker and giving him an honorary degree. 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 a strong advocate of any legal expansion of abortion rights. She has taught at Boston College Law School and Harvard Law School. From 2008-09, she was 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 resigned in 2018. She is on the board of directors for First Things. In 2018, she was finally honoured by Notre Dame’s Center for Ethics and Culture with their Evangelium Vitae Medal. She has three daughters.
President, Catholic University of America
Peter Kilpatrick, the 16th president of the Catholic University of America in Washington DC, is an experienced leader, educator and scholar, 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 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 lifting up people of all backgrounds. Combining research and faith is important to Kilpatrick, who became Catholic as an adult.
Professor of philosophy, Boston College
Peter John Kreeft, 85, is a professor of philosophy at Boston College and The King’s College. A convert to Roman Catholicism, 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.
Professor of politics, Assumption College
Daniel Mahoney, professor emeritus of politics at Assumption College Massachusetts, has written widely on politics and political thought, statesmanship, and religion and public life. He is a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute on statesmanship and political philosophy. In 1999, Mahoney was the recipient of the Prix Raymond Aron. He is the executive editor of Perspectives on Political Science and a senior writer at Law and Liberty. He is the author of several books and has written for Crisis, First Things, The New Criterion, and the Wall Street Journal. He is an authority on the French political philosopher Raymond Aron and the Russian novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
Provost, University of Notre Dame
John McGreevy has been the Charles and Jill Fischer Provost of the University of Notre Dame (the second-highest rank) 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.
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.
President, Loyola University Maryland
Terrence M Sawyer has served as the 25th president of Loyola University Maryland since the start of 2022. Prior to working at Loyola, Sawyer was an attorney for the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development and practised civil and criminal law in Baltimore City. He is a member of the Maryland State Bar. Sawyer and his wife are devout Catholics and parishioners at the Church of the Nativity in Timonium, Maryland.
President, Santa Clara University
Julie Sullivan is president of Santa Clara University in California. 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 lay and first woman president in Santa Clara University’s history.
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.
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.
Areas of Catholic Herald business are still recovering post-pandemic.
However, we are reaching out to the Catholic community and readership, that has been so loyal to the Catholic Herald. Please join us on our 135 year mission by supporting us.
We are raising £250,000 to safeguard the Herald as a world-leading voice in Catholic journalism and teaching.
We have been a bold and influential voice in the church since 1888, standing up for traditional Catholic culture and values. Please consider donating.