French professor is chosen for 2014 Award
Source: Zenit
The Ratzinger prize, referred to as the "Nobel of Theology", will for the first time this year recognize a woman theologian.
Cardinal Camillo Ruini announced on June 17th the award recipient as French professor Anne-Marie Pelletier, the prize’s first female winner, (together with Polish priest and scholar, Professor Waldemar Chrostowski).
Professor Pelletier, 69, married with three children, is a scholar of hermeneutics and biblical exegesis who has also examined the role of women in Christianity. Having earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Paris and a licentiate in theology from the Catholic Institute of Paris, she currently teaches sacred Scripture and Hermeneutics Biblical Study at Paris’ Notre Dame Seminary.
Referring to Pelletier as “a most distinguished figure in contemporary French Catholicism", Cardinal Ruini said she “unites deserved scientific prestige and a great and versatile cultural liveliness with an authentic dedication to causes of the highest importance for Christian witness in society”.
The scholar has taught and published extensively, and is best known for her works in the field of hermeneutics and biblical exegesis and on the question of women in Christianity. Her research endeavors range from Christianity and Judaism, to the monastic world.
The Ratzinger Prize is a monetary award for an amount of some $87,000. The Ratzinger Foundation, a charitable organization whose aim is "the promotion of theology in the spirit of Joseph Ratzinger," funds scholarships and bursaries for poorer students across the world. The charity makes most of its money from selling the writings of the Pope Emeritus.
The Ratzinger Prize was instituted by the foundation in 2010, when Pope Benedict XVI announced that it had decided to donate a sizable sum of money for the establishment of a sort of 'Nobel Prize in Theology,' as the president of the foundation's scientific commission had termed it. It is intended to recognize those who perform promising scholarly research relating to or expounding upon his work.
