Benedictine College Announces Bishop Barron as 2022 Commencement Speaker

Benedictine College is pleased to announce that the Most Reverend Robert E. Barron, Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries, will be the Commencement Speaker for 2022. Commencement is set for May 14, 2022, at 10:00 a.m. in the Ralph Nolan Gymnasium on the college campus in Atchison, Kansas.

Bishop Baron will give the keynote address and receive an honorary degree at Commencement and will also receive an award of excellence from the Center for Beauty and Culture the day before. Patrick J. Reilly, founder, president and CEO of The Cardinal Newman Society, will also receive an honorary degree. Tickets will be required for admission to the Commencement exercises.

Bishop Barron, an acclaimed author, speaker, and theologian, is widely known for Word on Fire, the global media ministry he founded in 2000. Through that ministry, he has reached millions of people, drawing them into or back to the Catholic faith, and sharing the message of the New Evangelization around the world. He also hosted Catholicism, an award-winning documentary series about the Catholic Faith which aired on PBS. He is one of the most followed Catholics on social media, with over 3 million followers on Facebook and his YouTube videos being viewed over 50 million times.

Bishop Barron is the Episcopal Vicar of the Santa Barbara Pastoral Region, one of the five Pastoral Regions in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. He was appointed Titular Bishop of Macriana of Mauritania and Auxiliary Bishop in 2015. He received his M.A. in Philosophy from the Catholic University of America in 1982 and a Doctorate in Sacred Theology from the Institut Catholique de Paris in 1992.

Shortly after his ordination, he served as associate pastor at St. Paul of the Cross Parish in Park Ridge, Illinois. Later, he was appointed to the theological faculty of Mundelein Seminary and has served as a visiting professor at the University of Notre Dame and at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome, as well as scholar in residence at the North American Pontifical College at the Vatican. He served as the Rector/President of Mundelein Seminary University of St. Mary of the Lake, in Illinois.

Founded in 1858, Benedictine College is a Catholic, Benedictine, residential, liberal arts college located on the bluffs above the Missouri River in Atchison, Kansas. The school is proud to have been named one of America’s Best Colleges by U.S. News & World Report, the best private college in Kansas by The Wall Street Journal, and one of the top Catholic colleges in the nation by First Things magazine and the Newman Guide. It prides itself on outstanding academics, extraordinary faith life, strong athletic programs, and an exceptional sense of community and belonging. It has a mission to educate men and women within a community of faith and scholarship.