On May 18, Catholic Charities president Kerry Alys Robinson received the University of Notre Dame’s highest honor—the Laetare Medal—at the university’s 180th commencement, in recognition of her “her boundless compassion, visionary leadership and inspiring example of faith-filled service,” at Catholic Charities and beyond. Commonweal is proud to have deep connections with past Laetare Medal awardees, who include editors Peter and Margaret O’Brien Steinfels and longtime contributor Dorothy Day—but we can think of no better recipient in 2025.

This year’s awardee is also a longtime friend of the magazine, and Robinson was the 2022 recipient of Commonweal’s Catholic in the Public Square Award—making the Laetare Medal her second most prestigious award yet. Robinson has served the Church for decades, including through her work with and for the Raskob Foundation for Catholic Activities, the Opus Prize Foundation, and as the founding executive director of Leadership Roundtable. In 2023, she was appointed as the CEO of Catholic Charities USA, one of the largest social-services organizations in the United States. Robinson has spoken at-length about her work at Catholic Charities during an era of increased political hostility towards both foreign aid and domestic social services, including in Commonweal—her January 2025 conversation on the Commonweal Podcast about that very topic can be found here.

Appropriately, the university featured Robinson’s friend and Commonweal’s executive director. Ellen B. Koneck, in its video honouring Robinson. “When I think of Kerry’s work, I think about it, at its core, as about building relationships and taking responsibility for the ways in which trust has been broken,” Koneck explained. “In all the places her vocation has taken her, it’s been about not looking away from the thing that is wounded—in the Church or in humanity. That strikes me as the definition of compassion.”

More information on Robinson’s work and the Laetare Medal’s history can be found here.