The 2026 Annual St. John Henry Newman Lecture featuring David Gibson

February 12, 2026

7–8:30 PM

Information Commons 4th Floor, Lake Shore Campus

Attendance is free and all are welcome

---

This year’s lecturer is David Gibson, Director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham University. 

David Gibson went to Rome a Protestant, got hired by the Vatican, traveled the world with the pope, and became Catholic. Nice story. But what could such a tale possibly teach most of us about becoming Catholic, and staying Catholic? In the 2026 Newman Lecture, Gibson – a veteran journalist and currently director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham University – talks about what took him from his upbringing as a “Billy Graham Evangelical” to his conversion to Roman Catholicism, and how his unusual experience relates to our church’s challenges today.

---

The St. John Henry Newman Lecture Series is named after the great 19th century English prelate who wrote movingly about his intellectual journey toward Roman Catholicism in his spiritual autobiography, Apologia pro vita sua (1864). Newman's work helped later generations Catholics and converts map out ways to understand the datum of religious faith in light of the contemporary issues facing modern life. Honoring this engagement with the Catholic tradition, CCIH invites scholars each spring to recount their own discovery (or rediscovery) of the Catholic intellectual heritage in light of their ongoing scholarship.