Pope Leo XIV will personally present an eponymous “Sustainability Medal” to its first-ever recipient, Cardinal Michael Czerny, S.J.
Villanova University, which established the “Pope Leo XIV Sustainability Medal,” announced the upcoming award ceremony on Monday during a press conference in the Vatican’s Sala San Pio X.
Leo XIV, who attended the U.S.-based university in the 1970s, will present Czerny with the medal on October 13 in the Borgo Laudato Si’ garden, part of the Pontifical Gardens of Castel Gandolfo.
The award will recognize Czerny’s years of “remarkable service” for sustainability and honor him as “a leader whose life reflects the very best of what this medal represents,” according to Vatican News.
Czerny, who was prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development (DPIHD) between 2022 and 2026, co-founded the Jesuit Centre for Social Faith and Justice in Toronto in 1979, and was its first director until 1989. From 1990 to 1991, following the murder of six Jesuits and others at the University of Central America in San Salvador, Czerny became the director of the university’s Institute for Human Rights (IDHUCA), a position that had been held by one of the murdered priests.
Continue reading at LifeSite News