Vatican City, Jun 14, 2011 / 09:19 am
The first three winners of the inaugural Ratzinger Prize for Theology were announced June 14.
The prize was established last year to promote theological study on the writings of Pope Benedict XVI and has been referred to as “the Nobel Prize for Theology.”
“We chose to reward two scholars already well established, and one who is relatively young but very promising,” Cardinal Camillo Ruini remarked at a Vatican press conference.
The two scholars chosen for the prize are Professor Manlio Simonetti, an 85-year-old expert on the Church Fathers who used to teach at Rome’s La Sapienza University, and Professor Olegario González de Cardedal, a 77-year-old specialist in dogmatic theology at the Pontifical University of Salamanca, Spain.