Pope Benedict celebrates life and legacy of influential theological "outsider"

Erik Peterson was born in Hamburg on June 7^th, 1890 and died in that city on the 26^th of October 1960. He was trained as a Lutheran theologian and began an academic career that had great promise, before experiencing a call to conversion and full communion with the Catholic Church. In 1930, he converted to Catholicism, in Rome, where he also founded a family.

A convinced enemy of Italian fascism and German national-socialism, he struggled through years of poverty and distress, with temporary teaching posts until 1947, when he was made assistant professor for Patristics with an emphasis in the area of ‘antiquity and Christianity’ at Rome’s Pontifical Institute for Christian Archaeology.

He became a full professor in 1956, just 4 years before his death at the age of 70.

In his remarks to the participants, Pope Benedict XVI remembered Peterson as a thinker from whose work, Theological Treatises, he himself learned in a profound and essential manner what theology really is.

“He did not limit himself to saying what he thought [in his work, Theolische Traktate]. The book,” said Pope Benedict, “was an expression of a journey, which was the passion of his very life.”

The Symposium dedicated to Peterson’s thought opened on Sunday the 24^th and closes on the 26^th of October, the 50^th anniversary of his death.

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