A short video with highlights from the dinner can be found here.
On October 5, 2026, over 400 Commonweal friends, contributors and staff gathered for the Commonweal Benefit Dinner, celebrating the magazine’s 102 consecutive years of publication. The room was brimming with guests, including a notable contingent from South Bend, as this year’s Centennial Award recipient was Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., distinguished president emeritus of the University of Notre Dame. After a cocktail hour along the Hudson River, Notre Dame vice president Ann Firth opened the celebration with an invocation, which you can read here, and Notre Dame philosophy professor and Commonweal Board Member Meghan Sullivan served as emcee for the evening.
Editor Dominic Preziosi celebrated Commonweal’s longstanding ties to Notre Dame, and then went on to announce Arvin Alaigh as the 2026/2027 Centennial Writing Fellow, thanking inaugural fellow Aaron Robertson for his excellent reporting on parish closures and the Black Catholic experience in America. Two younger writers, Dr. Naomi Fisher and Julian Assele, received the newly established awards from the Edward Skillin Society for journalism and social justice.
Cardinal Blase Cupich surprised those gathered in the room—and surprised the honoree himself—with a video message commending Fr. Jenkins and hearkening back to their common upbringing in Omaha. After an introduction by former Notre Dame board chairman John J. Brennan (which you can read here), Fr. Jenkins focused his remarks on institutions, noting the traditional Catholic “knack” for institutions and their work: “They draw people together for a work at a particular time and place,” he reflected, “yet they also unite people across time to serve a mission that both endures and adapts to changing circumstances.” You can read Fr. Jenkins’s remarks in full here.
The dinner ended as Commonweal executive director Ellen B. Koneck announced the new Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C. Initiative for Campus & Early Career Formation, so named, Koneck explained, “in honor of Fr. John’s lifelong commitment to higher education, civil discourse, and the cultivation of young people capable of moral reasoning and civic friendships.” Dinner co-chairs Tom and Allison Franco made a significant gift that will provide the foundation for this and other initiatives in Commonweal’s second century. “What a gift,” indeed.
You can see and download photos from the dinner here.
