The coronavirus outbreak didn’t stop the 1st edition of the Piazza Grande Religion Journalism Award. The international Jury is in the process of selecting the winner, who will be announced on Monday, June 22nd. We received many powerful entries and we very much look forward to reading the story selected by the jurors. If you are also eager to know the winner, check out the IARJ and FSCIRE websites on 22nd June!

A new wave of research on religious leadership is finding that significant numbers of clergy show evidence of struggling with clinical signs of narcissism. The troubling discoveries cross liberal and conservative boundaries, and can be found among evangelical, mainline Protestant and Catholic religious leaders, as well as among rabbis and imams. This problem—and promising solutions through developing healthy forms of humility—are explored in this new Global Plus column by Dr. Steven J. Sandage, research director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Psychology, and David Briggs, who writes for the Association of Religion Data Archives.

The COVID-19 pandemic is posing new challenges to journalists covering faith and religion. In early April, we invited our IARJ members covering this unprecedented story to share their holiday-related religion stories. We continue to receive news reports related to the impact of COVID-19 in different regions of the world—and we are passing along these fascinating reports by our members.

Two of the IARJ’s top journalists report on a wide range of research that suggests active involvement in religion promotes health and well being. They collaborated on this Global Plus column, which was sponsored by the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA), a leading association of university scholars who study religion.

ALERT for journalists across Europe and around the Mediterranean basin: only one week left for submitting your works to the first Piazza Grande Religion Journalism Award.

APRIL 2020—The International Association of Religion Journalists (IARJ) is proud to announce that we have formed a new board effective immediately.

David Crumm, Elisa Di Benedetto and Larbi Megari encourage religion journalists to report on the once-in-a-lifetime experience of major holidays in all three Abrahamic faiths interrupted by a global crisis—including links to some of the stories we already are seeing from reporters around the world.

In this interview in our Journalism Spotlight series, religion reporter Deepa Bharath of the Orange County Register (Southern California News Group) discusses the challenges of covering faith and religion in her part of the world.

Many of us at the IARJ are directly affected by the Coronavirus, or COVID-19, pandemic. We are publishing this sample of spiritual wisdom we have collected from around the world as a way to encourage all journalists to report on this vital theme in the crisis. At their best, religious leaders around the world can inspire billions of families to cope with the anxiety and to remain compassionate toward their neighbors.

U.S.-based religion writer Niraj Warikoo dialogues with Algeria-based journalist Larbi Megari, one of the long-time leaders of the IARJ, about story ideas that they hope will spark the attention of their colleagues in 2020.