To the Margins: Francis, Leo, and the Crypto-Religious 1980s
Our 7th Annual Wolfe Lecture on Religion and American Politics
Paul Elie
Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs
Respondent: Kim Garcia, Boston College
Date:聽Tuesday, January 27, 2026
Time:聽5:30 - 7pm
Location:聽Higgins Hall 310 Auditorium
聽AV研究所 Bookstore will be on site selling copies of Elie's book, The Last Supper.
Pope Francis urged Catholics to go to the margins of the institutional church. That's what Paul Elie聽sought聽to do with his聽2025聽book聽The Last Supper聽--聽by聽telling the聽stories of writers, artists,聽and musicians who made "crypto-religious" work聽in the 1980s, often at the edges of formal belief. The聽span of time聽the book depicts聽---聽the聽decade聽of聽John Paul II's stadium Masses, Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," and the AIDS pandemic聽---聽shaped many of the Catholics in the Church Pope Leo XIV now leads. (Strange to say,聽our new Pope is only three years older聽than Madonna!) In this lecture, Elie will聽draw on the book and his writing about the papacy for The New Yorker to consider聽the ways the recent past influences our聽tumultuous聽present.
Paul Elie is a senior fellow in Georgetown University鈥檚 Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, and a regular contributor to The New Yorker, which published his Profile of Pope Leo XIV early this year. His third book, The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980s, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in May 2025, and was chosen as a best book of the year by the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.
He is the author of two previous books, The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage (2003) and Reinventing Bach: The Search for Transcendence in Sound (2012), both National Book Critics Circle Award finalists. He worked for two decades as a senior editor with Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He lives in Brooklyn.
Kim Garcia is the author of three books of poetry and a chapbook. Her most recent book is The Brighter House, from White Pine Press. She has received numerous grants and awards including the Tupelo Broadside Prize, The Dogwood Literary Prize, and the Linda Hull Memorial Prize, and her work has been featured on The Writer鈥檚 Almanac. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, AGNI, IMAGE and The Kenyon Review, among others.
From 2014 to 2016 she directed the Clough Center Arts & Democracy series, through which she brought to campus artists and writers such as Edward Hirsch, Jill Lepore, Kevin Young, Liza Lou, Lawrence Weschler, Gish Jen, Ramiro Gomez and Eavan Boland for discussions on the role of the arts in sustaining the culture of democracy. In 2023 she worked with the Boisi Center to organize "The Art of Encounter: Catholic Writers on the Margins," a conference featuring writers Alice McDermott, P谩draig 脫 Tuama, and R/B Mertz.
Garcia teaches creative writing in the English Department at Boston College.