The Saint Benedict Forum’s Catholic Speaker Series is hosting or co-sponsoring three presentations, one at Aquinas College and two at Hope College, on Tuesday-Thursday, April 5-7.

The public is invited to all three events.  Admission is free.

Three speakers will make presentations during “A Godly Humanism: Wisdom and Discipleship in the Thought of Francis Cardinal George” on Tuesday, April 5, at 7 p.m. in the Wege Student Center ballroom at Aquinas College.  The event will feature perspective on the cardinal, who died in 2015, by the Most Rev. David J. Walkowiak, bishop of the Diocese of Grand Rapids; and reflections on the cardinal’s final book, “A Godly Humanism: Clarifying the Hope That Lies Within,” by John Pinheiro, professor of history and director of the Catholic Studies Program at Aquinas, and Omar F.A. Gutierrez, who is the special assistant to the archbishop and manager of the Office of Missions and Justice in the Archdiocese of Omaha.

Gutierrez will present “Praise Be to You, My Lord: How Christians Should Think about the Environment,” a reflection on Pope Francis’ encyclical letter Laudato Si’, on Wednesday, April 6, at 7 p.m. at Hope in the Fried-Hemenway Auditorium of the Martha Miller Center for Global Communication.

Chad Pecknold, who teaches historical and systematic theology in the School of Theology and Religious Studies at The Catholic University of America, will present “Freedom for Truth: The Fate of Religious Liberty in Liberal Orders” on Thursday, April 7, at 4 p.m. at Hope in the Fried-Hemenway Auditorium of the Martha Miller Center for Global Communication.

The Saint Benedict Forum is an outreach of St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church, with which the college’s Campus Ministries program has a covenantal partnership.  The forum is presenting the April 5 event in partnership with the Lumen Christi Institute and Aquinas College. The April 6 event is co-sponsored by the Department of Religion, Environmental Studies Program, and Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences at Hope, as well as by the Corpus Christi Foundation and the Our Sunday Visitor Institute.  The April 7 event is co-sponsored by the Tocqueville Forum at Hope.

Aquinas College’s Wege Student Center is located at 1607 Robinson Road S.E. in Grand Rapids.  The Martha Miller Center for Global Communication at Hope is located at 257 Columbia Ave., at the corner of Columbia Avenue and 10th Street.