Soon after the announcement of Santa Fe’s Archbishop John Wester as our 2026 Teacher of Peace, Pax Christi Young Adult Caucus member Ryan Di Corpo interviewed the archbishop. This video is a part of a series of video interviews with recipients of the annual award, a series which was created for the 50th anniversary of Pax Christi USA in 2022.
Watch the video here:
Born in San Francisco, Archbishop Wester was ordained a priest in 1976 and appointed as auxiliary bishop there by Pope John Paul II in 1998. In 2007, he was named by Pope Benedict XVI as the bishop of Salt Lake City, Utah, and in 2015, Pope Francis named him the archbishop of Santa Fe.
In January 2022 Archbishop Wester, whose archdiocese is located in one of the key locations of the US nuclear industry, issued his courageous and ground-breaking pastoral letter “Living in the Light of Christ’s Peace: A Conversation Toward Nuclear Disarmament.” This first major statement on nuclear weapons by a US bishop since the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ “The Challenge of Peace” in 1983 has renewed a sense of shared responsibility in US Christian communities.
Pax Christi USA will celebrate Archbishop Wester on Saturday, November 21, at Trinity University in Washington DC. Details will be shared closer to the date of the event.