The Academy of American Franciscan History offers grants ranging from $5,000 to $20,000 to scholars studying Franciscan history in the Americas. Visit aafh.org/grant for more information or contact Jeffrey M. Burns at acadafh@fst.edu.
Shaun Blanchard (University of Notre Dame Australia) serves as convenor of the new Global Catholic Studies group at the University of Notre Dame Australia. The group includes Stephen Bullivant, Annemarie McLaren, Father Benjamin Johnson, O.F.M. Cap., and Liam Temple. He also contributed, with 17 colleagues including Notre Dame’s Jennifer Martin, an essay on John Henry Newman in the positio requested in 2024 by the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Causes of Saints. Pope Leo XIV named Newman the 38th Doctor of the Church on All Saints’ Day 2025, and Blanchard has engaged in a range of public-facing outreach, writing articles, offering lectures, and speaking with U.S. and Australian media as well as participating in online events on Newman and his legacy. Blanchard’s recent publications include “The Catholic Enlightenment,” in T&T Clark Handbook of Modern Theology, edited by R. David Nelson and Philip G. Ziegler (Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2026); “Catholic Enlightenment from Catholicisme intransigeant to the Reception of Vatican II: Black Legend, Myth, or Historiographical Tool?” in Debating Enlightenment: Scholarship, Historiography and the Transmission of Books and Ideas, edited by Marco Barducci (Boydell and Brewer, 2025); “The Ghost of Modernism: Evocations of Anti-Modernist Doctrinal Documents at Vatican II,” in Theological Studies (2025); and “Continuity and Discontinuity in Fruitful Tension,” in Embodying the Tradition: Essays in Memory of Joseph Mueller, S.J. (1960–2023), edited by Andrei Orlov (Gorgias, 2025).
Jeffrey M. Burns (University of San Diego) shares that the Academy of American Franciscan History has published Building a House of Living Stones: Essays in Honor of Joseph P. Chinnici, OFM, Friar and Historian. Published by the Academy of American Franciscan History and distributed by the Catholic University of America Press, the volume is edited by Michael Blastic, O.F.M., Jeffrey M. Burns, and William J. Short, O.F.M. The Festschrift contains essays by leading scholars on the three main areas of Chinnici’s scholarship: the Franciscan intellectual tradition, the clerical abuse scandal, and U.S. Catholic history.
Valentina Ciciliot (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice) published the article “U.S. Evangelicals, Race and Racism: The Viewpoint of Christianity Today (1950s–1990s)” in Annali di Storia dell’Esegesi (2025). She also contributed chapters in two new edited volumes: “L’approccio cattolico al problema ecologico: cenni sul magistero pontificio, le conferenze episcopali e l’attivismo sacerdotale” in Dal Codice forestale camaldolese alla spiritualità della terra: Tracce di una storia, edited by Claudio Ubaldo Cortoni (Camaldoli, 2025), and “Il laboratorio missionario del Pontificio istituto missioni estere ‘Le Missioni Cattoliche’ (1872–1968)” in Laboratori della fede: Religione e cultura popolare in Italia dall’Unità al miracolo economico, edited by Giovanni Vian (Carocci, 2026).
William S. Cossen (Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science, and Technology) received the American Catholic Historical Association’s inaugural Christopher J. Kauffman Prize in U.S. Catholic History at the association’s 2026 annual meeting for his book Making Catholic America: Religious Nationalism in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (Cornell, 2023). The Kauffman Prize honors the author of a monograph that provides new or challenging insight to the study of U.S. Catholic history.
Michele Dillon, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire, was awarded the 2025 Civitas Dei Medal from Villanova University in recognition of her exemplary contributions to the Catholic intellectual tradition.
Fidei Communio is a new biannual journal of theology and religious studies published by Nerbini. Open access and international in scope, it brings theology into conversation with philosophy, history, sociology, law, political science, literature, and the arts. The journal’s second issue includes an article by Cushwa Center Rome Advisory Committee member Rev. Roberto Regoli titled “L’inutilità della storia della Chiesa. Ovvero la sua necessità” (“The uselessness of Church history. That is to say, its necessity”). Find the new journal at nerbiniscaffaleaperto.it.
Brian Heffernan (KU Leuven and UCLouvain) published with Messenger Publications in 2026 Leo XIV: An Augustinian Life in Context, a short biography of Robert Prevost through his election as pope that gives particular attention to his Augustinian background.
Ann Killian, O.P. (University of Notre Dame) published the chapter “Experiencing Theological Education in Vowed Religious Life” in At This Time: Dialogues in Theological Education (Eerdmans, 2026), a volume in the Theological Education Between the Times series. She also contributed to “Learning in Pieces,” a feature on theological education in the February 2026 issue of the Christian Century.
Matías Maldonado Araya (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) is pleased to announce the publication of his article “Joaquín Larraín Gandarillas, navigating kinship and ecclesiastical agendas (1851–1853): a transnational agent of the Chilean Church” in the Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies. The study sheds new light on the expansion of Chilean Catholic networks across the United States and Europe in the mid-19th century, highlighting the role of Larraín Gandarillas as a key transnational actor. This research was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and by a Research Travel Grant from the Cushwa Center.
Herbie Miller (independent scholar) published The 1837 Debate on Roman Catholicism Between Bishop John Purcell and Alexander Campbell: The World Is Large Enough for Us All with Bloomsbury Publishing in 2025. A revision of his dissertation, the book addresses early 19th-century U.S. history, American Catholicism, Protestantism, oral debate, and civility in American democracy. Miller received a Cushwa Research Travel Grant in 2013 to conduct research at the Notre Dame Archives while writing his dissertation at the University of Dayton.
Anthony Petro (University of Notre Dame) joined the Department of American Studies at Notre Dame in fall 2025. In April 2025, he published Provoking Religion: Sex, Art, and the Culture Wars with Oxford University Press. Since 2024, he has served as a series editor for New York University Press’s North American Religions series.
Federico M. Requena (Pontificia Università della Santa Croce) published L’Amour miséricordieux: Circulation d’une dévotion française dans le monde hispanique (1922–1936) with Les Éditions L’Harmattan in December 2025. The book examines the Work of Merciful Love as a major religious phenomenon in early 20th-century Catholicism, tracing its spread from France to Spain, Italy, and Latin America before its marginalization in the early 1940s. Initiated by the French Visitation nun Marie-Thérèse Desandais, this devotion preceded the path of Saint Faustina Kowalska by 30 years and belonged to the period’s mystical renewal at the intersection of the Sacred Heart devotion and transnational Catholic networks. This book sheds light on the origins, forms, and reception of this spirituality, drawing on the history of devotional literature, devotional circulation, and Catholic sociability between the two world wars.
Susan Ridgely (University of Wisconsin–Madison) published One True Church: An American Story of Race, Family, and Religion with the University of North Carolina Press in March 2026.
The Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word Archives (San Antonio) has published a new digital humanities exhibit to mark the 100th anniversary of the Cristero Rebellion. “The Sisters and the Mexican Revolutions” features primary sources that reveal the congregation’s cross-border connections and experiences during the Mexican Revolution (1910–20) and the Cristero Rebellion (1926–29 and 1932–41). Learn more by visiting ccviarchives.omeka.net.
Thomas A. Tweed (University of Notre Dame) spoke about Religion in the Lands That Became America: A New History (Yale, 2025) at Baylor, Princeton, and Colby. In addition, a Russian translation of Tweed’s America’s Church was published: Церковь Америки (Academic Studies Press, 2025). Tweed’s reflection on an earlier article appeared as “Documenting the Emergence of a White Male Protestant Establishment” in American Religion (2025). “How the Plymouth Pilgrims Took Over Thanksgiving—and Who History Left Behind” was published in English and in French by The Conversation and reprinted in national and international news outlets. See it at doi.org/10.64628/AAI.aqcs7gywp.
Whānau Mercy Ministries and Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington will host a symposium on Catherine McAuley in Wellington, New Zealand, on December 13–15, 2026. Inspired by the 200th anniversary of Catherine McAuley’s opening of the House of Mercy in Dublin in 1827, this three-day symposium will explore the impact of religion across education, healthcare, and social services, with a thematic lens grounded in Catherine McAuley’s own intention: “To serve God faithfully.” The symposium offers an opportunity for wider exploration of what it means to be a religious organization within the changing global environment. There will be a particular emphasis on the significance and contribution of Indigenous perspectives to religious organizations. The symposium will gather academic experts, Mercy leaders, educators, healthcare professionals, and advocates from across Aotearoa, the Pacific, and beyond. The symposium website includes a call for papers and registration is now open. Learn more at whanaumercy.nz/catherine-mcauley-symposium.
Dennis J. Wieboldt III (University of Notre Dame) shares three recent publications: “Ideas With(out) Consequences?: The Natural Law Institute and the Making of Conservative Constitutionalism During the Cold War, 1947–1951,” Law and History Review (2025); “The ‘Crusading Fanatics’ of American Law: American Jesuits and the Origins of the Neoscholastic Legal Revival, 1870–1960,” Journal of Law and Religion (2025); and “‘Shall We Settle for Anything Less Than Complete Equality?’ Catholic Power and the First National Fight for Parental Rights in Education, 1947–1962,” Religion and American Culture (2026).
Deanna Witkowski (Wheaton College) published the article “A Glorious Celebration: Mary Lou Williams’s Mass for the Lenten Season” in the fall 2025 issue of Jazz and Culture. Find the article at scholarlypublishingcollective.org.
These announcements appear in the spring 2026 issue of the American Catholic Studies Newsletter.