Villanova Roots Sustainability in Catholic Teaching
President Peter Donohue presents Cardinal Michael Czerny with the inaugural Pope Leo XIV Sustainability Medal at Castel Gandolfo.
Villanova University, a Catholic institution in the Augustinian tradition, opened its four-day International Sustainability Conference on Oct. 12 at the Augustinian Patristic Pontifical Institute in Rome. Under the theme "Responding to the Cries of the Earth and the Poor," the event gathers scholars, Church leaders, and policymakers determined to advance integral ecology solutions that hold together the protection of creation and the defense of the poor.
Throughout the sessions, Villanova faculty are presenting research on the ethical and moral dimensions of sustainability drawn from Catholic social teaching. Speakers include Father John Abubakar, David Dinehart, Manuela Priesemuth-Payan, Jonathan Doh, and Ruth McDermott-Levy. Their contributions span disciplines and seek to show how the Church’s social doctrine can orient concrete choices in fields often treated as purely secular.
The university presents the conference as an expression of its mission: to bring faith-based perspectives into non-theological disciplines and to form scholars capable of reading environmental crises in the light of the Gospel and the Church’s teaching.
Inaugural Medal at the Laudato Si' village
A central moment of the week is set for Oct. 13 at the Laudato Si' village in Castel Gandolfo, where the inaugural Pope Leo XIV Sustainability Medal is to be awarded to Cardinal Michael Czerny. The Holy Father had been expected to take part; in light of his upcoming surgery, Villanova President Rev. Peter Donohue will present the medal instead.
The award, bearing the name of Pope Leo XIV, ties the university’s academic work to the pontiff’s insistence on care for creation and solidarity with the poor. Staging the ceremony at the Laudato Si' village further anchors the honor in a setting devoted to ecological conversion and service of the vulnerable.
The conference runs through Oct. 15. Across its four days, participants are called to move beyond diagnosis toward solutions that answer, together, the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor—the language of the meeting’s theme and a hallmark of Catholic teaching on integral ecology.
For Villanova, the Rome summit is more than an academic exchange. It is a public witness that sustainability, rightly understood, belongs within the Church’s social mission, and that Catholic universities have a distinctive word to speak when the planet and its poorest inhabitants are both under strain.