Villanova University will award the 2026 Civitas Dei Medal to Peter C. Phan, PhD, DPhil, STD, the inaugural Ignacio Ellacuría Chair of Catholic Social Thought at Georgetown University, according to a March 17 announcement. The medal presentation ceremony is scheduled for April 15 at Driscoll Hall, where Phan will deliver a lecture titled “Saint Augustine the Migrant and the City of God.”
The Civitas Dei Medal recognizes Catholics who have made significant contributions to the Catholic intellectual tradition and the pursuit of truth, beauty, and goodness. Villanova officials said that Phan’s research covers Orthodox theology, patristic theology, eschatology, Christian missions in Asia, liberation theology, inculturation, and interreligious dialogue.
Phan is an accomplished author with more than 40 books and over 300 published essays. His major works include “Culture and Eschatology: The Iconographical Vision of Paul Evdokimov,” “Grace and the Human Condition,” “Eternity in Time: A Study of Rahner’s Eschatology,” “Mission and Catechesis: Alexandre de Rhodes and Inculturation in Seventeenth-Century Vietnam,” “Christianity with an Asian Face,” and “Being Religious Interreligiously.” His writings have been translated into more than a dozen languages.
A native of Vietnam, Phan was the first non-Anglo president of the Catholic Theological Society of America. In 2010 he received its highest honor—the John Courtney Murray Award—for distinguished achievement in theology. He has also earned four honorary doctorate degrees during his career.
Phan holds degrees from Don Bosco College in Hong Kong; the University of London; Salesian Pontifical University in Rome; as well as doctorates in philosophy and divinity from London. He has held academic appointments worldwide for more than six decades and has served as founding director of Georgetown’s theology and religious studies doctoral program since his appointment there in 2003.
The Civitas Dei Medal is named after St. Augustine’s work “The City of God,” which encourages engagement between church teachings and broader society.
