Berkley Center

On August 3 Senior Fellow Paul Elie, author of The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980s (2025), joined Clay Risen and Kevin Butterfield for a panel discussion about new takes on recent history at the Library of Congress National Book Festival.

Berkley Center Director Thomas Banchoff and Richard L. Woof of the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at the University of Southern of California introduce a series of essays in Commonweal examining the relationship between Pope Francis' "culture of encounter" and democratic life. The essays grew out of a February 2026 symposium convened by the Berkley Center and the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies, in collaboration with the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University, The Georgetown Democracy Initiative, and Commonweal, with support from the Henry Luce Foundation.

Berkley Center Senior Fellow Katherine Marshall and coauthor Olivia Wilkinson explore the definition and usage of "Strategic Religious Engagement" and outline how SRE interacts with development work at large. 

Writing for the World Economic Forum, Berkley Center Senior Fellow Katherine Marshall highlights how fraying global safety nets and rapid tech shifts threaten vulnerable populations. Drawing on Pope Leo XIV's recent encyclical, Marshall calls on policy leaders to integrate religious teachings into global governance to ensure progress serves the common good.