Prestigious Ratzinger Prize awarded to Notre Dame theologian, Japanese sculptor at Vatican

Vatican City, Nov 22, 2024 / 14:35 pm

Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin awarded the Ratzinger Prize to University of Notre Dame theologian Cyril O’Regan and Japanese sculptor Etsurō Sotoo at a ceremony at the Vatican on Friday evening.

The Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI Vatican Foundation chooses the annual recipients of the award, which is named in honor of the late Pope Benedict XVI.

Before the ceremony on Nov. 22, the prize recipients took part in a Mass celebrated by Archbishop Georg Gänswein in the Vatican crypts close to the tomb of Benedict XVI.

They also met with Pope Francis in his study in the apostolic palace.

O’Regan is a systematic theologian who specializes in the thought of 19th- and 20th-century Catholics like St. John Henry Newman, Henri de Lubac, and Hans Urs von Balthasar.

Born in Ireland in 1952, O’Regan is the first Irishman to win the coveted prize, which has been awarded since 2011 to distinguished scholars mostly working in theology and philosophy.

O’Regan, who earned doctorates in both theology and philosophy from Yale University, has taught at Notre Dame since 1999.

In his speech at the award ceremony on Friday, O’Regan described feeling inadequate to have received the honor, calling the prize “more gift than [just] desert.”

The other 2024 Ratzinger Prize winner, Sotoo, is a Japanese sculptor whose work appears in places like the Sagrada Família Basilica in Barcelona, Spain.

Sotoo moved from Japan to Europe in 1978. After settling in Germany, he moved to Spain, remaining in Barcelona, where he went on to become the chief sculptor of Gaudí's Sagrada Familia, the basilica that has been under construction since 1882 and on which Sotoo is responsible for approximately 500 sculptures.

He also sculpted the ambo, from which the Gospel is read, in Florence, Italy’s famous Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral.