BOLOGNA, Italy, March 3, 2019—The International Association of Religion Journalists (IARJ) and the Fondazione per le Scienze Religiose Giovanni XXIII (FSCIRE), an Italian research institute focused on religious studies, have joined forces to launch a new award for religion reporting, the Piazza Grande Religion Journalism Award.

As we continue our series of profiles of our IARJ Regional Representatives, we share inspiring words from Elisa Di Benedetto (our representative for Europe). Even though she focuses on Europe, where she is based, Elisa has become a global public face of the IARJ. In 2012, she was one of our co-founders. She helps to coordinate international conferences to this day. In 2019, she is inspiring American readers of a new book about diversity. And, in this profile, we also share links to follow Elisa online.

IARJ European board member María-Paz López takes us inside a conference exploring the role journalists can play in accurately and fairly covering the waves of migration heading into Europe. She also provides helpful links to a report on journalists’ responses to migration, offered in four different languages.

IARJ member Bhavya Srivastava, a journalist from India, is a 2018 KAICIID Fellow. He writes about the hopes for peacemaking among his colleagues in a recent training program. The center in Austria has expanded dramatically its network of fellows. “Counting alumni and the new 2018 fellows, there are now 142 of us from diverse backgrounds,” Bhavya writes.

Religion is playing a major role in response to the European economic crisis. As faith-based organizations are increasingly depended upon to meet basic needs, a new landscape of challenges and opportunities is emerging that could result in dramatic shifts in church-state relations. A key question: Can a continent, once seen by many as on an inexorable march toward secularization, create new boundaries between the religious and the secular that respond to social needs in Europe’s increasingly diverse societies?