Mitch Boersma
Co-Founder & Executive Director
Mitch Boersma
Mitch Boersma is Co-founder and Executive Director of the Leonine Forum. He is also the Chief Operating Officer of the Catholic Information Center (CIC) – an organization committed to making the Catholic Church alive in the hearts and minds of men and women living and working in our nation’s capital. Originally from Colorado, Mitch holds a Bachelors degree in Business from the University of Dallas and a Masters degree in Moral Theology and Ethics from the Catholic University of America. Mitch held research positions at the American Enterprise Institute (Washington, DC) and worked as an independent writer and researcher on several book-length projects. In 2013, Mitch was named one of FOCUS’ (Fellowship of Catholic University Students) 30 under 30 young Catholics, He is a Tertio Millenio Seminar Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and a graduate of the Summer Seminar on Catholic Social Teaching from the Society of Catholic Social Scientists. His work has appeared in secular and religious news outlets including RealClearReligion, EWTN, Legatus Magazine, Fox News, The Stream, Verily Magazine, and National Review Online, among others. He and his wife Rosie live in Fairfax, VA with their two children.
Julie Larkin
Director of Operations
Julie Larkin
Julie Larkin serves as the Director of Operations at the Leonine Forum, where she is a proud alumnus of the 2016-2017 Washington DC cohort. She is a New Jersey native, and graduate of The Catholic University of America, receiving her undergraduate degree in psychology and her Master of Science in Business Analysis. Julie is the founder and director of Girl Talk, a non-profit organization dedicated to building a sisterhood of self-worth for women in high school and college. She hopes to inspire every person to recognize his or her inherent dignity and live virtuous lives.
Fr. Charles Trullols
Spiritual Director & DC Chaplain
Fr. Charles Trullols
Fr. Charles Trullols is the Spiritual Director and DC Chaplain of the Leonine Forum. He is also Director of the Catholic Information Center, appointed by His Eminence Donald Cardinal Wuerl in March 2017. He is also an assistant of the theology department at the Oakcrest School in Virginia. Originally from Barcelona, Spain, where he graduated from the Viaro Global School, he then earned his architecture degree from the School of Architecture of Barcelona. He then moved to Rome where he studied Theology. He earned a PhD in Canon Law at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, and worked for four years at the headquarters of Opus Dei.
He was ordained a priest in Rome for the Prelature of Opus Dei in 2006. Following his ordination, he was assigned to work in Granada, Spain as Chaplain of Mulhacén School. In 2008 he moved to the United States and lived in Pittsburgh, PA and in South Bend, IN, where he served the pastoral needs of the Prelature of Opus Dei and exercised his ministry with college students. In 2012 he moved to Chicago and was appointed Spiritual Director of the Prelature of Opus Dei in the Midwest.
Fr. Roger Landry
NYC Chaplain
Fr. Roger Landry
Father Roger Landry works for the Holy See’s Permanent Observer Mission to the United Nations in New York. Ordained a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts, in 1999, he is the former pastor of St. Bernadette Parish (2012-2015) in Fall River and of St. Anthony of Padua Parish (2005-2012) in New Bedford, MA, and the former executive editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River (2005-2012). He is an alumnus of Harvard College and the Pontifical North American College in Rome, where he did graduate work at the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family. He was an on-site commentator for EWTN’s coverage of the 2013 papal conclave that elected Pope Francis, appears often on various Catholic radio programs, and is national chaplain for Catholic Voices USA. He regularly leads pilgrimages to Rome, the Holy Land, Christian Europe and other sacred destinations and preaches several retreats a year for priests, seminarians, religious and lay faithful. He lectures widely on the thought of Popes Francis, Benedict and John Paul II, especially John Paul II’s theology of the body, writes for many Catholic publications and is the author of the new book Plan of Life: Habits to Help You Grow Closer to God.
Fr. Arne Panula
Co-Founder (1946-2017)
Fr. Arne Panula
Fr. Arne Panula, 71, a priest of the Prelature of Opus Dei, passed away on July 19, 2017, after struggling for many months with cancer. He is survived by his three sisters, Lynne, Amy, and Pat, their husbands, Wynne, Ralph, and John, and eleven nephews and nieces.
Fr. Panula was born and raised in Duluth, Minnesota. He attended Harvard University where he was on the crew team. After graduating in 1967 with a B.A. in English Literature, he moved to Rome to study theology where he lived with St. Josemaria Escriva, Opus Dei’s founder. He was ordained a priest in 1973 and earned a doctorate in Theology from the University of Navarre, in Pamplona, Spain. After ordination, he served as chaplain of The Heights School in Washington, D.C. in the mid-1970’s, after which he exercised his ministry for many years in Northern California, working with high school and university students. From 1998-2002 he was Vicar of the Prelature of Opus Dei for the United States, in New York.
From 2007 on he was the Director of the Catholic Information Center in Washington, D.C. where he carried out a rich and fruitful work of spiritual direction. He also expanded the mission of the Center by creating the Leonine Forum to educate men and women early in their careers in the core tenets of the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church.
Courtney Horton
NYC Coordinator
Courtney Horton
Courtney is currently a medical student at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. Previously, she worked as a senior associate in healthcare at GLG (Gerson Lehrman Group) and as a medical assistant in the dermatologic surgery practice of Janet H. Prystowsky. Courtney graduated from Yale University in 2015 where she studied biomedical engineering. At Yale, she was a member of the Federalist Party of the Yale Political Union, and in 2013, founded the Yale Vita et Veritas Conference on Life.
Zac Horton
NYC Coordinator
Zac Horton
Thomas Z. Horton (‘Zach’) is an analyst at Blackstone Alternative Asset Management. He received his undergraduate degree summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton University, where he studied philosophy with a focus on political theory and natural law. His undergraduate thesis on the history and arguments for the principle of subsidiarity won the Princeton Philosophy Department’s McCosh Prize for best overall thesis. At Princeton, Zach led The Princeton Tory, the conservative campus newsmagazine, as Publisher and Editor-in-Chief and was a three-year member of the Daily Princetonian‘s independent Editorial Board. Zach has served both as the first summer intern for Senator Ted Cruz in his Washington D.C. office and as a legal intern for Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Portland, Oregon. Upon graduation, Zach spent a year in investment banking at Rothschild & Co. before transitioning to Blackstone. He presently serves as Secretary of America Media’s Associates Board and founder/organizer for the Great Stroll, an annual charity walk around the perimeter of Manhattan. Most recently, he married Courtney Lee Horton (née McEachon), who is also a New York City Leonine Fellow.
Courtney is currently a medical student at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. Previously, she worked as a senior associate in healthcare at GLG (Gerson Lehrman Group) and as a medical assistant in the dermatologic surgery practice of Janet H. Prystowsky. Courtney graduated from Yale University in 2015 where she studied biomedical engineering . At Yale, she was a member of the Federalist Party of the Yale Political Union, and in 2013, founded the Yale Vita et Veritas Conference on Life.
Weronika Janczuk
NYC Assisant Coordinator
Weronika Janczuk
Weronika Janczuk works as a literary agent with D4EO Literary Agency, where she sells novels and non-fiction projects to publishing houses. She spent five years working in different capacities, including as regional director for North America, on educational, cultural, and health programming for the World Youth Alliance (WYA) and FEMM (Fertility Education & Medical Management). She is a daughter to Polish immigrants, completed a self-designed B.A. in the Philosophy of the Human Person at NYU, and writes on the philosophy and theology of the heart. She is working on a novel, and her writing appears in the journal Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought & Culture, among others.