Applications are open for the second edition of the Piazza Grande Religion Journalism Award. Journalists covering religion, faith and spirituality in both mainstream and confessional media – newspapers, magazines or news websites – that publish regularly in Europe, including Iceland and Russia, and the countries surrounding the Mediterranean basin are invited to submit their works by April 15, 2023.

The International Association of Religion Journalists (IARJ) is launching its third series of online global dialogues, bringing together reporters from different regions of the world. The 2023 theme will be religious extremism in their countries.

Canadian IARJ member John Longhurst writes about the importance of including religious leaders in global gatherings to discuss our collective future.

Our IARJ colleagues are active in many media networks around the world, including the Religion & Media Interest Group of the Association of Educators of Journalism and Mass Communication. The Winter 2022-23 issue of that group’s Religion & Media UPDATE includes stories about two of our colleagues.

The IARJ’s Douglas Todd reports on discussions at the latest International Center for Law and Religion Studies conference, held in Cordoba, Spain, at which representatives of the IARJ also participated.

IARJ board member Pedro Brieger writes about the evolving relationship between the papacy and Latin America. His column—posted in Spanish and English—begins: “La historia latinoamericana y caribeña desde la conquista española estuvo atravesada por la influencia de la espada y la cruz.”

In this column in our “News and Views” series, IARJ board member Prince Charles Dickson describes the complex structure of religion and politics in Nigeria.

In our fifth global discussion about religion and politics, IARJ members from North America discuss common misconceptions about the complex influence of religion in shaping community life and national policies.

In our second “IARJ News and Views” column, our IARJ Sub-Saharan Africa Representative Yazeed Kamaldien writes about his participation in the Global Exchange on Religion in Society (Geris) project funded by the European Union, which recently took participants to the United States to explore challenges journalists face in covering the theme “Being a Minority.”

In a new occasional series of columns, called “IARJ News and Views,” we are inviting some of our veteran members to share perspectives from their regions of the world. In a first column, former IARJ Executive Director Endy Bayuni writes about his perspective from Indonesia on the United Nation’s decision to declare a special day, each year, to combat Islamophobia.