Blessed Christmas! Annual Report Offer

Blessed Christmas Octave!

As we head into 2016, I want to express my gratitude for your ongoing support of the Gregorian Institute.

To continue the Gregorian Institute’s important work, we are asking for additional donations. Donors will receive our 2014-2015 annual report, detailing our successes this year (click here to give by specifying The Gregorian Institute at Benedictine College).

It was extremely gratifying this year to see how our strategy is paying off. Our mission is to promote Catholic identity in public life by training tomorrow’s Catholic leaders, equipping current leaders, and celebrating and defending the faith. This year we saw that this approach is actually working.

I’d like to highlight a few accomplishments below.

Gregorian Fellows

This leadership program is designed to train and launch Catholic leaders rooted in their faith and ready to be effective in contemporary society. In the 2014-2015 academic year, the Institute realized its target goal of having 100 Gregorian Fellows-in-training. Thanks to director Dr. Joseph Wurtz, this year the Fellows interned across the country in political, theological, business, and human rights positions. They served as moderators for Benedictine College’s annual New Evangelization Symposium, participated in life-skill workshops throughout the year given by professionals, attended the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture’s annual conference, defended the unborn in the March for Life in Washington, D.C., helped create a high school leadership program, and served the poor on mission trips around the world.

Graduates of the Gregorian Fellows program are already bringing the principles of Catholic leadership everywhere from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City to service to the homeless on the streets of Denver to seminary in Rome.

Speech Digest

The recently published Andreas Widmer speech digest has been widely read and appreciated, so much so that the Cardinal Newman Society has asked for reprints they can distribute, expanding the reach of the Gregorian Institute. We are adding new subscribers every week, new donors regularly, and developing initiatives to increase our donor base so that we can have even greater impact, thanks to our new program coordinator, Eileen Wittig.

Looking to the Future

Finally, I’d like to tell you about our next exciting initiative of the Gregorian Institute: We are planning a Media Conference for November 2016. The conference will be developed around the question, How can Catholics who work in media live out their faith?

We hope to begin a dialogue among national Catholic media experts while generating a white paper on the topic that we will disseminate. Our goal is to help Catholics be more effective in the media for the advancement of the Church, as outlined by the Pope and bishops in a series of groundbreaking documents first issued 50 years ago. After more than 25 years in journalism, including 10 years as editor of the National Catholic Register, I have seen firsthand how important this work is.

Thank you so much for your support and gifts that have made all of these accomplishments possible, and please help us continue to effectively defend and promote Catholic identity in public life.

Click here to give to Benedictine College. Specify the Gregorian Institute and we will send you our 2014-2015 Annual Report.

Yours in Christ,

Tom Hoopes

Editorial Director
Gregorian Institute at Benedictine College

The Gregorian Institute is Benedictine College’s initiative to promote Catholic identity in public life by equipping leaders (the Gregorian speech digest), training leaders (the Gregorian Fellows), defending the faith (the Memorare Army for Religious Freedom), and celebrating Catholic identity (the Catholic Hall of Fame).