Cardinal Donald Wuerl 
Cardinal Donald Wuerl
Keynote Speaker – The Welfare of the Family is Decisive for the Future of the World
The 77-year-old Archbishop of Washington, who was elevated to the College of Cardinals in 2010 by Pope Benedict XVI, has long been a leading figure in the Church’s ‘new evangelisation’ project, giving lectures and publishing books on the subject for some years before the then Pope appointed him relator, or general secretary, of 2012’s Synod of Bishops on the New Evangelisation.
Ordained to the priesthood in 1966, between 1969 and 1979 he served in Rome as secretary to Cardinal John Wright, prefect of the Congregation for Clergy, even accompanying the wheelchair-bound cardinal at the 1978 conclave that elected St John Paul II to the papacy.
Appointed rector of Pittsburgh’s St Paul Seminary in 1981, he became auxiliary bishop of Seattle in 1985 and was installed as Bishop of Pittsburgh in 1988, remaining in that role until 2006. While there he reduced the number of parishes in the diocese from 331 to 214, and earned a reputation for being tough on abuse, not least for removing one accused abuser from ministry and facing down a Vatican court which had ruled that he should be reinstated.
Archbishop of Washington since 2006, Cardinal Wuerl has built a reputation as a global leader in catechesis and attempts to revive the Church’s missionary efforts. A member of numerous national and international bodies including several Vatican congregations and councils, he is a keen promoter of Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation on love and the family.
Bishop Robert Barron
Presenter – Pope Francis on the Gospel of the Family: What is Jesus calling our families to be?
When it comes to the Church’s evangelisation efforts in the world today, few names are more prominent than Los Angeles’s Auxiliary Bishop Robert Barron. Founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries, the 58-year-old Chicago-born prelate was ordained in 1986 and after serving as a curate in Illinois taught in Chicago’s Mundelein Seminary, which he headed between 2012 and 2015, with spells teaching in Notre Dame University and in Rome’s Angelicum University and Pontifical North American College.
Author
A bestselling author and successful broadcaster, Dr Barron is the host of the award-winning documentary Catholicism and its successor documentaries Catholicism: The New Evangelisation and Catholicism: The Pivotal Players. He is one of the world’s most influential Catholics on social media, with over 123,000 followers on Twitter, 1.5 million followers on Facebook and his YouTube videos being viewed over 25 million times.
Chair of the US Bishops’ Committee on Evangelisation and Catechesis, Bishop Barron has been keynote speaker at many conferences and events, including the 2016 World Youth Day in Kraków, and the 2015 World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia. He is one of five US bishops appointed by Pope Francis to the upcoming Synod on Young People, the Faith, and Vocational Discernment.
Baroness Sheila Hollins
Major Panel Panellist – Safeguarding Children and Vulnerable Adults
Baroness Prof Sheila Hollins, is an independent Life Peer in the UK House of Lords, Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at St George’s University of London and Honorary Professor in the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Durham, and was a founder member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors from 2014 to 2017.
She accompanied Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor in the Vatican Visitation to the Church in Ireland in 2011, and in 2012 joined Irish abuse survivor and child protection campaigner Marie Collins in addressing the Vatican’s ‘Towards Healing and Renewal Symposium’ on the topic of ‘Healing a wound at the heart of Church and Society’.
She gave evidence last year to the Australian Royal Commission on Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on behalf of the Pontifical Commission.
She and her husband, Martin, have four children (two of whom are adults with disabilities) and four grandchildren.
Dr Carolyn Woo
Panel Moderator – Faith, Family and Development: The Witness of Women in Leadership
Raised in Hong Kong, Dr Carolyn Yauyan Woo moved to the USA to attend Purdue University in Indiana, where she received her bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees, and joined the faculty, becoming associate executive vice president for academic affairs and is now serving as the Distinguished President’s Fellow for Global Development at Purdue.
Between 1997 to 2011, she worked as dean of the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, and in 2012 became President/CEO of Catholic Relief Services, the international humanitarian agency of the Church in the USA, holding this position until 2016, during which period she published Working for a Better World, telling her own story and that of Catholic Relief Services and its work throughout the world.
One of five presenters in Rome at the release of Pope Francis’ environmental encyclical Laudato Si’, Dr Woo is married with two sons.
General Kristin Lund
Keynote Speaker – Voices of Impact: Women Leaders Shaping Global Change
Norwegian General Kristin Lund is the first woman to lead the UN Peacekeeping Forces. She is Head of Mission and Chief of Staff of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation (UNTSO) and was the first female officer to be promoted to the rank of Major General in the Norwegian Army, before becoming the first female Force Commander in a United Nations peacekeeping operation, while serving in Cyprus.
General Lund also has extensive experience in multinational operations, including deployment to Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Storm in 1991 and at the Headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan in 2003-2004.
She has been a member of the Nordic Women Mediation Network since 2015 and currently serves as an advisor at the Norwegian Defence University College in Oslo. In 2017, she became a UNWOMEN Champion.
The symposium which she is addressing will include themes such as women’s leadership in driving global growth and reducing poverty; peacekeeping; sustainability; entrepreneurship; girls’ education; violence against women; the needs of refugees, the challenges of the homeless and people with special needs.
It will be chaired by Irish broadcaster and entrepreneur Norah Casey and US business executive Susan Ann Davis and will feature a series of dynamic conversations and interviews with women leaders at the RDS.
This is the first time that a symposium of this type has featured as part of a WMOF event.
Archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Seán O’Malley OFM Cap
Major Panel Moderator – Safeguarding Children and Vulnerable Adults
Cardinal O’Malley is a popular and praised figure in the Church, commended for his role in addressing historic clerical abuse in the Boston area.
He has initiated a zero-tolerance policy against sexual abuse and in 2013 announced a pontifically approved commission, the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors whose purpose is to prevent clerical sex abuse and help victims.
He was ordained a priest in 1970 and was elevated to the cardinalate in 2006. In 2017, Pope Francis appointed him as a full board member to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
So noteworthy his work, he was considered a papabile contender to succeed emeritus Pope Benedict XVI in 2013, before Francis was chosen for the role.
In his mid-70’s, Cardinal O’Malley is still a strong candidate for the pontifical role, not only for the example he set for the Church on the abuse scandal, but also because he spent most of his career in Hispanic ministry, he is multilingual, and a defender of orthodox Church teaching.
Such is his evangelical outreach, that he became the first cardinal ever to have a personal blog and also offers regular podcasts.
Fr James Martin SJ
Workshop Speaker – Showing welcome and respect in our Parishes for ‘LGBT’ People and their Families
Born in 1960, Fr Martin is an American Jesuit priest and writer, and more widely known for his work as the editor-at-large of the magazine America. He is the author of over 10 books ranging from the influence of Thomas Merton to the relationship between joy, humour and Faith. Ordained in 1999, Fr Martin has a litany of academic qualifications including a masters degree in philosophy and a Masters of Divinity from the Weston Jesuit School of Theology.
In 2017, Pope Francis appointed Fr Martin as a consultant to the Vatican’s Secretariat for Communications. He hasn’t shied away from this role given his popularity on social media sites which often draws responses of approbation and sometimes controversy.
Although Fr Martin has spoken about an array of theological topics and issues such as anti-Catholicism in the entertainment industry and the intriguing lives of saints, at the moment he is recognised as a strong defender of migrant’s rights and the inclusion of the LGBT community in the Church.
His most recent book urges dialogue between the Church and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Catholics who feel estranged and excluded from it.
Gabriella Gambino
Major Panel Moderator – Dancing to the Future with Hope: Strengthening Marriage & the Family Today
Gabriella Gambino, 49, is currently a professor at the John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences, is a professor of bioethics at the Faculty of Philosophy, and a researcher and associate professor in the philosophy of law at the University of Rome ‘Tor Vergata’.
Originally from Milan, she holds a doctorate in bioethics from the Institute of Bioethics at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Rome.
From 2001-2007, she taught and did research at the Institute of the Methodology of Social Sciences of the LUISS-Guido Carli University in Rome, and in 2002 was appointed scientific expert of the National Committee for Bioethics at the Presidency of the Council of Ministers.
Gambino collaborated with the former Pontifical Council for the Laity and the Pontifical Academy for Life from 2013-2016.
She was appointed undersecretary of the dicastery’s section for life in November 2017.
She is married with five children, and has written numerous publications on the themes of life, family and marriage.
In addition to Italian, she speaks five other languages.
Linda Ghisoni
Major Panel Moderator – And the greatest is love: Pope Francis on 1 Cor 13
Dr Linda Ghisoni has held a position within the Vatican since November 2017, when Pope Francis appointed her as sub-secretary and the head of the section on laity, for the Dicastery for the Laity, Family, and Life.
Ghisoni, 52, works as a judge at the First Instance Court of the Vicariate of Rome. In addition to teaching canon law at the Gregorian, she is a professor of law at Roma Tre University.
She is from the town of Cortemaggiore in the north of Italy and studied philosophy and theology at the Eberhard-Karls-University in Tübingen, Germany.
She has served as Judicial Counsellor at the Tribunal of the Roman Rota from 2002-2009, and Commissioner of the Congregation for the Divine Worship and the Discipline of Sacraments for the Defence of the marital bond in causes for the dissolution of the marriage “ratum sed non consummatum” (ratified but not consummated).
Since November 2011, she has also worked at the Tribunal of the Roman Rota. From 2013-2016, she collaborated with the former Pontifical Council for the Laity in the field of specialist laity studies in the Church. She is married and has two daughters.
Cardinal Vincent Nichols
Keynote Speaker – Support and Preparation for Marriage in the Light of Amoris Laetitia
Well-known for defending a traditional understanding of marriage, Cardinal Nichols will offer some insightful thoughts in his talk. Born in 1945, Vincent Nichols studied for the priesthood at the Venerable English College in Rome from 1963 to 1970, gaining licences in philosophy and theology at the Gregorian University.
He was ordained priest in Rome on 21 December 1969 for the Archdiocese of Liverpool and in January 1980 he was appointed director of the Upholland Northern Institute, where he was responsible for the in-service training of the clergy, pastoral and religious education courses.
He was also a member of Archbishop’s Council with responsibility for pastoral formation and development in the diocese.
Commentary
Many would have heard his voice on TV and radio in 2005, where he provided the commentary for the worldwide BBC coverage of the death of Pope John Paul II and the Installation of Pope Benedict XVI.
In 2009 he was installed as the 11th Archbishop of Westminster following the retirement of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor and was elected President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales by unanimous acclamation on April 30 of that year.
On February 22, 2014, he was created Cardinal Priest by Pope Francis in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. He was designated the titular Church of St Alphonsus Liguori, a neo-Gothic church that is looked after by the Redemptorists. It is best known for housing the icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, a gift given to the Redemptorists by Pope Pius IX in 1866.
Monique Barbut
Panellist – Care for our Common Home: Why the Family Matters to the Future of our Planet
Monique Barbut was appointed by the United Nations Secretary-General as the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), starting October 2013. She has been committed to the issues of Desertification, Land Degradation and Drought through her previous work as Chief Executive Officer of the Global Environmental Facility (GEF).
Ms Barbut attended the first session of the Conference of the Parties (COP1) to the UNCCD as a delegate of the Government of France. She attended COP9 in Buenos Aires as key note speaker and substantively contributed to its outcome.
Prior to joining the GEF, she served as Director of the Division of Technology, Industry and Economics at the United Nations Environment Programme (2003-2006).
From 1996 to 2003, Ms Barbut held different positions in the Agence Française pour le Développement (AFD). Her work there related to the French aid system, particularly sustainable project financing activities in the French overseas territories, and activities relating to ex-post evaluation.
Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodríquez Maradiaga
Workshop Speaker – Pope Francis on the Revolution of Tenderness
Born 1942, Cardinal Maradiaga is a polymath of sorts, as he is multilingual, trained in classical piano, and has taught chemistry, physics and music. He earned doctorates in philosophy from the Institute “Don Rua” in El Salvador, in theology from the Salesian Pontifical University in Rome and moral theology from the Pontifical Lateran University.
He joined the Salesians in 1961, and was ordained a priest in 1970. With doctorates in philosophy and theology, he has also received a diploma in clinical psychology and psychotherapy from the Austrian University of Innsbruck. He became the first cardinal from Honduras in 2001, and notably was one of the cardinal electors who participated in the 2005 papal conclave that selected Pope Benedict XVI, and also in the 2013 selection of Pope Francis.
He is the current Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, President of Caritas Internationalis and was President of the Latin American Episcopal Conference (CELAM) from 1995 to 1999.
He was the Vatican’s spokesman with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, on the issue of debt in the developing world.
Rocco Buttiglione
Workshop Speaker – A Hidden Treasure: The Theology of the Body of Saint John Paul II
Known in philosophical circles as a close ally of St John Paul II, Prof. Buttiglione has written extensively about the mind and philosophy of the Polish Pope, and the new philosophy of human labour which underlies the encyclical Loborem Exercens. He has also written many articles clarifying the distinctions between Marxism and Christian doctrine.
Born in 1948 in Italy, he studied law in Turin and Rome, where he took his degree with a thesis in the history of political doctrines.
Prof. Buttiglione has held professorships at the International Academy of Philosophy in Liechtenstein and Saint Pius V University in Rome and has been a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Science. He has lectured internationally and is on the editorial boards of many Italian and foreign journals.
In the early 1990s, Prof. Buttiglione helped to form an Italian political party, the Christian Democratic Union and since 1994 has served in the Chamber of Deputies in the Italian Parliament. Since 1999 he has been a member of the European Parliament, and in 2001 he was appointed by Italy’s President Silvio Berlusconi to be Minister of European Affairs. He also serves on the Acton Institute’s board of advisors.
He is married and is the father of four daughters.
Dr Helen Watt
Panellist – Love made Fruitful: Amoris Laetitia on Cherishing the Gift of New Life
An expert in bioethics, Dr Watt is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Anscombe Bioethics Centre, Oxford and from 2001-2010 was Director of the Linacre Centre for Healthcare Ethics.
From 1992-2001 she held the post of Research Fellow at the Centre; from 1993-1996 she was also Senior Research Associate at Peterhouse, Cambridge. Her research interests include reproductive ethics and action theory, particularly issues of cooperation and complicity. She has spoken extensively on the morality of abortion as well as issues in reproductive and sexual ethics.
Her publications include The Ethics of Pregnancy, Abortion and Childbirth (Routledge, 2016) and Life and Death in Healthcare Ethics (Routledge, 2000), together with several edited volumes including the conference collections Cooperation, Complicity and Conscience (Linacre Centre, 2005) and Fertility and Gender (Anscombe Bioethics Centre, 2011). She has also published articles in a range of journals including Clinical Ethics and the Journal of Medical Ethics.
Her most recent book explores issues surrounding IVF, surrogacy, and anonymous donor conception as well as less-discussed topics such as the right to mother a child.
Kevin Hyland OBE
Human Trafficking – ‘An Open Wound on the body of Contemporary Society’ (Pope Francis)
As one the founders of the Santa Marta group – who combat human trafficking – Kevin Hyland OBE will tackle one of the most challenging topics of the congress.
With his panel discussion being one of the only over 18s events, it won’t pull punches when discussing how human trafficking pervades contemporary society.
The Santa Marta group was launched by Pope Francis at the Vatican in April 2014 and was developed by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England in collaboration with the London Metropolitan Police and is led by Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster.
Hyland was born in 1963 and was formerly the head of London Metropolitan Police Service’s Human Trafficking Unit and was also a police officer for 30 years.
He retired from the force as a detective inspector in 2014 and specialised in various crimes throughout his career including homicide, gun crime, anti-corruption and then human trafficking and slavery.
In 2010 Hyland was appointed as the lead for the London Metropolitan Police’s Human Trafficking Unit. During Hyland’s tenure the London Metropolitan Police saw an increase in victim identifications and successful prosecutions of traffickers.
He also worked as the UK’s Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner and was recently appointed CEO of ChildFund Ireland who work internationally to develop an enabling environment where children’s basic needs are met and their rights are promoted and respected.
Cardinal Mario Zenari
Main Arena Keynote Speaker – The Family as a Key to Peace in a Turbulent World
As the Pope’s representative in Syria, where conflict has created one of the modern world’s largest refugee crisis and Christian persecution is a major issue, Cardinal Mario Zenari will no doubt be a compelling speaker.
Born in Verona in 1946, Cardinal Zenari has served in several diplomatic positions including Senegal, Liberia, Columbia, Germany and Romania.
In 1999 Pope John Paul II appointed him apostolic nuncio for the Ivory Coast and Niger. A few days later he was appointed as nuncio in Burkina Faso as well. In 2004 he was made the Pope’s representative in Sri Lanka before being chosen for his current station as apostolic nuncio in Syria, by Pope Benedict XVI in 2008.
Cardinal Zenari refused to abandon his post during the ongoing bloody conflict in Syria, and is quoted as saying: “How could a representative of the Pope flee the place where they need him most?”
He has called for people not to forget the continuing atrocities in Syria, where half a million people have been killed and millions have become refugees, and continues to be a voice for the country’s persecuted 2-3% Christian minority.
Much of the nunciature’s activities are to organise humanitarian aid with Caritas Syria and other agencies.
Zenari was proclaimed cardinal by Pope Francis in the consistory of November 16, 2016.
Barbara Thorp
Safeguarding Children and Vulnerable Adults
Barbara Thorp, LICSW is a mother, grandmother and social worker with 35 years ministry in the Archdiocese of Boston.
In 2002 she was asked to design, implement and oversee a programme of outreach and pastoral care for women and men sexually abused as children by clergy.
Under the leadership of Cardinal Seán O’Malley, she coordinated a nine-day pilgrimage of atonement for parishes profoundly impacted by clergy sexual abuse and was part of the team that facilitated the meeting with clergy abuse survivors and Pope Benedict in Washington DC.
In 2010-11 she was a member of the Apostolic Visitation team led by Cardinal Seán to the Archdiocese of Dublin.
Currently, Barbara is the Programme Director at the One Fund Centre at Massachusetts General Hospital.
She has been responsible for responding to the complex recovery needs of those injured at the Boston Marathon Bombing on April 15, 2013.
Sr Nathalie Becquart
Vocational Discernment and the Family: Preparing for the Youth Synod, 2018
As the director of the National Service for Youth Evangelisation and for Vocations at the Bishops’ Conference of France since 2012, Sr Nathalie Becquart is well-versed on how family plays a role in supporting vocations of all varieties amongst young people.
Born in 1969, she graduated in Commercial Studies in 1992. In 1995 she joined the Xavière Missionaries of Jesus Christ, an Apostolic Congregation of Ignatian Spirituality. She was Coordinator of the French Catholic scouts’ programme for youth in difficult suburbs, from 1999 to 2002. Nathalie has an MA in philosophy and theology (Centre Sèvres Paris) and an MA in Sociology (EHESS).
She did campus ministry in Créteil University, Paris, from 2002-2011 and was deputy Director of the National Service for the Evangelisation of Youth and Vocations in charge of university pastoral care from 2008-2012.
She was Vice-President of the European Vocations Service 2016-2018 and a member of the Bishop’s council of the Diocese of Nanterre, 2015-2018.
Cardinal Christoph Schönborn
In Light of the Word: Celebrating Family in the Judeo-Christian Tradition
Kicking off the pastoral programme in the RDS is Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, the Archbishop of Vienna, a stalwart theologian whose work has helped define much Catholic teaching.
Born into aristocracy in Skalken, Bohemia in 1945, his family fled to Austria the same year. He is a member of the princely House of Schönborn, whose members bear the title of Count.
In 1963 he joined the Dominican Order. He studied philosophy, psychology and theology in Walberberg, Regensburg, Vienna and Paris. He was ordained priest 1970 in Vienna and obtained a doctorate in 1974 in Paris.
One of his most notable achievements was from 1987-1992, when he was chosen as the editorial secretary for the Catechism of the Catholic Church under Pope Benedict XVI.
Considered among the papabili following St John Paul II’s death, Cardinal Schönborn was one of the cardinal electors who participated in the 2005 papal conclave that selected Pope Benedict XVI, and the 2013 papal conclave that selected Pope Francis.
Cardinal Schönborn was chosen to present Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love) at a Vatican press conference in April 2016, and is said to be one of the most authoritative voices in interpreting the document –which is most likely why organisers billed him to open the event.
Schönborn serves as a member of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Oriental Churches and Catholic Education as well as being involved in the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelisation. He is a member of the Cardinal Commission for the Supervision of the Institute for the Works of Religion.
