171st Hillsdale College Commencement

Commencement Speaker | Bishop Robert Barron

Robert Barron is bishop of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester (Minnesota) and founder of the Word of Fire Catholic Ministries. He received his B.A. and M.A. from the Catholic University of America, his S.T.L. from Mundelein Seminary, and his Ph.D. from the Institut Catholique de Paris. Bishop Barron was ordained a priest in the Archdiocese of Chicago in 1986 and appointed to the theological faculty of Mundelein Seminary in 1992. He has taught as a visiting professor at the University of Notre Dame and the Pontifical Un diversity of St. Thomas Aquinas and was twice scholar in residence at the Pontifical North American College at the Vatican. He served as the Rector/President of Mundelein Seminary University from 2012-2015. Ordained a bishop in 2015, he served as auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles from 2015-2022. He is the creator and host of the documentary series Catholicism and has written numerous books, essays, and articles. Episodes of his podcast The Word on Fire Show have been listened to over ten million times, and over a half-million subscribers receive his daily email reflections.