Journalist Federica Tourn was the first winner of the Piazza Grande Award, which was
launched in 2019 by the International association of Religion Journalists (IARJ) and the
Fondazione per le Scienze Religiose Giovanni XXIII (FSCIRE) to encourage best practices in
journalism and honor the work of journalists covering religion and spirituality.
In this interview by Jelena Jorgačević she tell us how she started reporting on religion and what it means to be a female journalist covering religion.

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?