Cardinal Kurt Koch, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and of the Commission for Religious Relations with Judaism, has awarded the first John Paul II Prize for Catholic‒Jewish Studies.

The winner of the prize was Father Ryan Muldoon, who was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of New York in 2019. Rabbi Jack Bemporad, founder of the John Paul II Center for Interreligious Dialogue located at the Angelicum, presented the prize in recognition of Father Muldoon’s doctoral thesis, “The Land of Our Fathers in Faith: The Theological Role of the Land of Israel for Contemporary Jewish‒Catholic Dialogue.”