Annual Report

As one of the nation’s leading Catholic academic institutes, the IHE is honored to magnify the efforts of the universal Church through the work of our Scholars and programs. For the 2024–2025 academic year, we oriented our programming around Pope Francis’s Jubilee exhortation to become “Pilgrims of Hope.”

During a year that saw IHE Scholars ascend the Scala Sancta on bended knee, tread in the footsteps of English martyrs in Oxford and London, venerate the relics of French martyrs in Paris, and enliven the campus that gave the world Venerable Fulton Sheen, Venerable Emil Kapaun, and Sister Thea Bowman, we had the “pilgrim” aspect well in hand. But what about hope? After all, this year our Scholars tackled heavy topics like war, technological threats to humanity, declining birth rates, antisemitism, and political strife. Yet this is where the IHE’s interdisciplinary approach, which integrates philosophical and theological truth with contemporary science, bears fruit.

Saint Thomas Aquinas describes “hope” not only as a theological virtue but also as a base passion: the urge to progress towards a challenging, but not impossible, goal. Often, the work of a Catholic scholar involves defining the proper aim of hope, avoiding utopias of social order and nihilistic outlooks that leave no room for the power of grace (as our Scholars brilliantly showcased at our Third Annual Lecture on Catholic Political Thought). Hope requires realism, and realism — for the Christian — requires a cosmic vision of Christ’s eternal victory over sin and death. We tread a fallen earth, striving toward and making present the eternal reality. In other words, hope for the IHE Scholar — and any pilgrim — is not only reaching the goal but sanctifying each step along the way.

May our 2024–2025 Annual Report edify your endeavors and renew your hope.

F. Russell Hittinger, Ph.D.
Executive Director

Stephen P. Higgins, J.D.
Managing Director