Please join Columbia Catholic Ministry for this year’s Thomas Merton Lecture by Astronaut Mike Massimino, with special guest Timothy Cardinal Dolan providing a blessing. The Thomas Merton Lecture Series was established in the fall of 1978 by Columbia Catholic Ministry to honor Thomas Merton, O.C.S.O., the author of the bestselling “The Seven Storey Mountain” and a 1938 graduate of Columbia College and 1939 graduate of Columbia’s Graduate School of Arts and Science. Past speakers include Cardinals, writers, business executives, and more, discussing such varied topics as one’s religious conversion as a prisoner of Iran (Kian Tajbakhsh in 2016), capital punishment and Hollywood filmmaking (Sister Helen Prejean, C.S.J., in 1997), and Merton himself (Br. David Steindl-Rast, O.S.B., at the inaugural 1978 address). The series is generously supported by the Hugh J. and Catherine R. Kelly Endowment for the Merton Lecture at Columbia University.