Bishop Robert Barron receives Josef Pieper prize for outstanding communication of Christian thought in culture

Applauded as “one of the most influential Catholic evangelists in the world,” Bishop Robert Barron of the diocese of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, received on Sunday the esteemed 2025 Josef Pieper Prize in Münster, Germany. 

As OSV reports, the award “furthers the legacy” of Pieper, the 20^th-century German Catholic philosopher, and is “conferred every five years for outstanding works upholding Christian anthropology.”

Bishop Stefan Oster, SDB, of Passau, Germany, said in his introductory remarks Sunday that Barron’s “most significant and extensive contribution to the Church’s ministry of faith is summarized in Word on Fire Catholic Ministries,” a nonprofit global media apostolate now celebrating its 25th anniversary.

Speaking in German, with an English translation provided by Word on Fire, Oster said Barron has made his expansive contributions to the Church’s evangelical ministry through his vast “biblical education,” “understanding of Scripture,” and “philosophical training.” 

Oster described Barron’s mission as “about proclaiming the Word of God itself in such a way that it can ignite—’Word on Fire’—so that people ask afterward, ‘Didn’t our hearts burn in our chests?’ And that they might then stay on this track, continue to follow this Word, and bring it to life in their own lives.”

“But what makes the heart burn?” Oster asked. “One essential aspect is Bishop Barron’s comprehensive biblical education, his knowledge of Scripture. Like hardly anyone else, he opens up the coming of Christ from the whole of Scripture, including the great tradition of the Old Testament with its many fascinating announcements and promises that find their fulfillment or culmination in Christ.”

With Barron’s ability to connect Jewish tradition to our understanding of Jesus in the New Testament, Oster said “Barron proclaims the whole Christ, not just that one pleasant to us. It is about the pre-existent Son of God, about the Messiah promised in the Old Testament, about the child of Bethlehem, about the herald of the kingdom of God, about the healer of the sick, about the head of the new people of God, about the suffering and the dead, about the risen Christ as well as about the Christ who will return and judge.”

In his preaching, Oster continued, Barron gives us this picture of “the whole Christ, who invites us to repentance and new birth and who teaches us—as Paul says—to allow our whole thinking to be taken captive in him, in Christ.”

Oster praised Barron as well for his knowledge “about man in our societies today.”

“[H]e is also very well informed about the cultural, political, and social trends of the time and constantly seeks public discussions with key figures from politics, culture, and the media,” Oster said. “And he does so with figures of all political and ecclesiastical persuasions.”

Above all, however, Oster observed that the “decisive factor” that makes Barron most effective is that he is “a praying man.”

“He constantly calls us as Christians, especially those who are involved in preaching, to the ‘holy hour,’ the daily hour with the Lord, by the Liturgy of the Hours, by reading the Scriptures, by adoration of the Blessed Sacrament,” Oster said.

Barron gets his keen ability to “ignite,” he added, by “[a]ppropriating Scripture on the one hand from comprehensive education, and on the other hand from prayer, from dialogue with its author—this is the source of the anointing and the Word that can ignite and carry away.”

The UK-based Catholic Herald noted Barron’s appreciation of Pieper’s work in its report of his interview with German Catholic television station K-TV. 

“I’ve always felt [Pieper is] one of the best kind of introductory writers in terms of Thomas Aquinas,”

Barron said. “He’s a model of good writing. He writes very deeply, but also simply. His writing isn’t weighed down by all sorts of academic jargon. It’s more straightforward. I appreciate that about him.”

“And I think he’s one of the clearest writers in the 20th-century in the Catholic tradition,” Barron added. “So to receive the award in his name is a great honour to me because he’s someone I’ve tried to imitate in my own writing.”

Barron’s gifts as a communicator of the “Word” were front and center Wednesday during the Jubilee of Youth in Rome, where young people from the United States gathered to hear his address.

The Word on Fire founder reminded the young pilgrims of the strength and perseverance of the Church, built upon Peter, “the Rock,” that has “outlasted every empire” throughout the ages.

“Where is Nero’s successor? Nowhere,” Barron pointed out. “There is no successor to Nero…And where is the successor of Peter, who was put to death in the Circus of Nero and buried away on the Vatican hill? Where’s his successor? I saw him last night, didn’t you? Riding around St. Peter’s Square.”

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