Waldsteins with Pope St. John Paul IIFor three weeks in October of 2008, the 12th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops met in the Vatican on the theme “The Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church.” Among those advising the bishops in their studies and discussions was Dr. Michael Waldstein, Thomas Aquinas College Class of 1977.

The Synod on the Word of God, a continuation of the 2005 Synod on the Eucharist, focused on examining the intrinsic connection between Holy Scripture and the Blessed Sacrament. Dr. Waldstein, who in 2008 joined the faculty at Florida’s Ave Maria University as the Max Seckler Professor of Theology, was appointed a peritus (expert) for the Synod, one of only 41 periti from around the world to be so appointed.

Dr. Waldstein previously spent eight years as the founding president of the International Theological Institute in Gaming, Austria, following eight years as a theology professor at the University of Notre Dame. He and his wife, Susan (Class of 1978), were also one of only nine couples appointed by Pope John Paul II to serve on the Pontifical Council for the Family.

In 2006, Dr. Waldstein published Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, an authoritative and highly acclaimed translation of Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, based on a long-missing outline of the works that Dr. Waldstein discovered among the Holy Father’s papers in the John Paul II archives at Rome’s Casa Polacca. Dr. Waldstein holds a masters in philosophy from the University of Dallas, a licentiate in Scripture from the Pontificium Institutum Biblicum in Rome, and a doctorate in New Testament studies from Harvard Divinity School.