Thursday, February 12, 2026 at The Catholic University of America is the setting for this year’s annual address. The Figel Address on Ecumenical Dialogue focuses on contemporary issues in ecumenism, and is sponsored by the devoted layman-ecumenist Jack Figel. It also includes the annual Ecumenism Award of the Consortium and an ecumenical prayer service organized by WTC students. A reception will follow the event.

The recipient of this year’s Ecumenism Award and speaker will be Auxiliary Bishop Emeritus Denis Madden of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore.

To view videos and resources from past Figel Lectures, visit this page. To view past recipients of the Ecumenism Award, click here.

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About Bishop Madden

Bishop Denis J. Madden, Auxiliary Bishop Emeritus of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore, entered the Benedictine Order and was ordained a priest in 1967. He subsequently received an MA in Psychology from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Notre Dame. He assumed a position in the Psychology Department, University of Maryland—Baltimore while also serving as a marriage and family counselor for Associated Catholic Charities.

He taught in the University of Maryland School of Medicine, providing counseling for clergy and religious of the Archdiocese of Baltimore. In 1976 he transferred to become a priest of the Archdiocese of Baltimore and from 1994-96 he served as Director of the Pontifical Mission for Palestine office in Jerusalem. In 1997, he became Associate Director of Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA), and was one of the co-founders of the Accord Foundation, a humanitarian organization that has worked since 1988 in the West Bank and Gaza.

He was appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Baltimore in 2005 and one year later was appointed a member of the Bishops’ Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs (BCEIA) and remains a member in his retirement. He co-chaired the Lutheran-Catholic Dialogue in the United States, which produced the common statement, Faithful Teaching in 2019. He served as Chairman of the BCEIA from 2011-2014, overseeing the release of the 2014 statement Dialogue with Muslims in response to “a deliberate rejection of this call to engage in dialogue with our Muslim brothers and sisters by some in the Catholic Church and in other ecclesial families.”

In 2018, he co-chaired with ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson, Declaration on the Way: Church, Unity, and Eucharist, an evaluation of Lutheran-Catholic progress in ecumenical relations and the next steps suggested.

In all these ways, and more, Bishop Denis Madden has been a constant witness among U. S. Catholic bishops of the irreversible commitment of the Catholic Church to ecumenical and interreligious relations.