Lumen Christi Institute
Making the Catholic intellectual tradition a vital part of the secular university
Featured Events & News
Remembering Thomas Levergood
This August marks the fifth anniversary of the death of Thomas Levergood, the founder of Lumen Christi. Thomas believed that the Catholic intellectual tradition had the power to transform minds, shape culture, and renew the Church. That conviction was the animating force behind everything he built at Lumen Christi and the reason this Institute exists today.
Read More
Seeking Graduate Reading Groups for the Fall Quarter
The Lumen Christi Institute seeks leaders for its Fall Quarter graduate student reading groups. These groups are rooted in friendship, hospitality, and the pursuit of truth, and they may explore any genre, theme, time, and place. Proposals for prospective groups are due on August 5, 2026.
Learn More & Apply
Apply to Ricketts House, our Catholic Student Residence
The Lumen Christi Institute offers a residential community for current and incoming male University of Chicago students, with capacity for nine total residents. As an intentional Catholic residence, the residents partake in weekly community meals, community prayer, and opportunities for intellectual and spiritual formation.
Learn More & Apply
The Importance of Stories: A Week with Martin Shaw
For Shaw, stories are a basic human need because humans are meaning-seeking creatures. We are intelligent, which means both that we seek truth and we make sense of our lives and our world through narratives, or stories.
Read More
Partner Spotlight: The Fons Vitae Institute at Duke
The programming that Fons Vitae provides at Duke, like each of the member-institutes of the network across the country, exemplifies Levergood’s vision for the expansion of the effort to maintain the Catholic intellectual tradition today.
Read MoreLumen Christi has been one of the great spiritual achievements of the last 25 years. And to see Lumen Christi flourishing so well and expanding around the country is a sign of tremendous hope for the Church.
The longest intellectual tradition of any institution in the contemporary world.
Celebrated University of Chicago President Robert Maynard Hutchins once remarked that the Catholic Church has “the longest intellectual tradition of any institution in the contemporary world.” The mission of the Lumen Christi Institute is to make the Catholic intellectual tradition a vital part of the secular university and the broader culture. The Lumen Christi Institute’s programs enrich academic communities at the University of Chicago and beyond with the insights of Catholic thought, in order to engage our secular culture in dialogue and ultimately to renew our civilization by forming leaders for a global society in need of Christian wisdom.
Subscribe to our newsletter
Join our email list to hear the latest on our events, lecture videos and news.
Support our mission
Making the Catholic intellectual tradition a vital part of the secular university