Notre Dame has announced that the recipient of this year's Laetare Medal will be Dana Gioia -- the first poet to receive the honor.

In his vocation as poet and avocation as arts administrator, Dana Gioia has given vivid witness to the mutual flourishing of faith and culture, said Notre Dames president, Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C. By awarding him our Universitys highest honor we hope both to celebrate and participate in that witness.

Gioia served as the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts under President George W. Bush. In 2003, Commonweal published a profile of Gioia, written by Cynthia Haven. Read it here to get acquainted, or reacquainted, with his achievements and his outlook. A taste:

He speaks about how the chasm between art and religion in contemporary culture has impoverished both. Art is one of the ways we can call people back into the church. He says that the arts have always been congenial to the Catholic worldview, because Catholicism is a faith which believes that transcendent truths are incarnated. The sacraments are models of this. They are outward signs that symbolize an inward turn of grace. The Catholic, literally from birth, when he or she is baptized, is raised in a culture that understands symbols and signs. And it also trains you in understanding the relationship between the visible and the invisible. Consequently, allegory finds its greatest realization in Catholic artists like Dante....He speculates that one of the ways to foster a healthier view of Catholic arts is by creating opportunities, commissionsby having magazines like Commonweal. Commonweal has an extremely important place in American intellectual life because it represents one of the doorways between religious and secular culture.

Obviously a man of wisdom. Read the whole thing here. And for more background about the Laetare Medal, check out Cathleen Kaveny's informative blog post from 2008.