Gregory Baum (pictured) was Canada’s pre-eminent Catholic theologian of the post-conciliar era and one of the better known of the younger generation of Vatican Council periti. Prolific, media savvy and inexhaustibly curious, he remained an active player in the Canadian political and religious arena until the end.
Born in Berlin, at the time of the Weimar Republic, Baum and his sister were nurtured in a liberal Protestant and Jewish family. When matters became ever more grave during the ascendancy of the Nazis he was sent abroad and spent much of the war years in internment camps in Canada.