Pope gives Ratzinger Theology Prize to American, French scholars

Pope Benedict XVI bestowed the 2012 Ratzinger Prize for Theology on an American expert on the early church fathers and a French scholar of religious philosophy.

U.S. Jesuit Father Brian E. Daley and Remi Brague received the award from the pope at a ceremony in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace Oct. 20.

Pope Benedict noted that the two men have studied in fields “decisive for the church in our times”: ecumenism and relations with other religions.

The scholars are “exemplary for the transmission of knowledge that unites science and wisdom, scientific rigor and passion for man, so that man might discover the ‘art of living,’” the pope said.

Father Daley, a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame, has written extensively about the development of Christian doctrine in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. The pope commended his work for demonstrating the unity of Christianity, with favorable consequences for relations between the Catholic and Orthodox churches.

Brague, an authority on medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophy, is a professor of Arabic and religious philosophy at Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich.

Father Daly told Catholic News Service in an Oct. 22 email that he was “totally surprised” that he received the Ratzinger Prize. [more]

SOURCE

CNS