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James Cardinal Gibbons Medal

American Catholic ecclesiastical decoration (1949–)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionDec 27, 2025
Entity authorityQ22023000 ↗
Source-derived summary

The James Cardinal Gibbons Medal is named in honor James Cardinal Gibbons, the founder and first chancellor of The Catholic University of America. It is intended to honor any person who, in the opinion of the university's Alumni Association's board of governors, has rendered distinguished and meritorious service to the Roman Catholic Church, the United States of America, or The Catholic University of America.

Winners include Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, Senator John F. Kennedy, Speaker John W. McCormack, Sargent Shriver, Nancy Reagan, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Sister Helen Prejean, and Ronan Tynan.

The Gibbons Medal is conferred by the university president on behalf of the CUA Alumni Association during the alumni awards ceremony. John F. Kennedy was awarded the medal while still a senator, upon the nomination of Eddie Pryzbyla, a future winner himself.

Editorial summary

“James Cardinal Gibbons Medal” enters the record as american Catholic ecclesiastical decoration (1949–). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what James, Cardinal and Gibbons can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current 135-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1949. Its strongest next move is a source search built around James, Cardinal and Gibbons.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“James Cardinal Gibbons Medal” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, James, Cardinal and Gibbons provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 27, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q22023000. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “James Cardinal Gibbons Medal”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow James Cardinal Gibbons Medal primary sources, James Cardinal Gibbons Medal archive and James research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “James Cardinal Gibbons Medal” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.