L to R: Former Ambassador Miguel Diaz, Vatican Archbishop Paul Gallagher, Ambassador Callista Gingrich, RFI President Tom Farr, RFI Chair Mark Winter, RFI Executive Director Kent Hill, and William Saunders

The Center for Religious Liberty at The Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law and the Religious Freedom Institute (RFI) sponsored The Fight for International Religious Freedom: Perspectives from the Vatican July 24 event held on Capitol Hill.

The event was a discussion of Vatican efforts to advance international religious freedom, and of U.S.-Vatican cooperation in those efforts. Speakers included: Amb. Callista Gingrich, US Ambassador to the Holy See; Archbishop Paul Gallagher, Vatican Secretary for Relations with States; Amb. Miguel Diaz, Former US Ambassador to the Holy See; Thomas Farr, President of the Religious Freedom Institute, and William Saunders, Co-Director of the Center for Religious Liberty at the Catholic University of America.

The National Catholic Reporter also covered the event:

"We meet today at a critical time," said Thomas Farr, the president of the Religious Freedom Institute. He then went on to discuss a Pew report saying that 83 percent of people worldwide live in countries with high or very high levels of restrictions on religious freedom.

Gingrich, the keynote speaker, mentioned the State Department's most recent annual report on worldwide religious freedom, which, she said, indicated that religious freedom had declined in the past year.

"Repression is a daily reality, and no religious group is immune from persecution," she said. "It's a dangerous time to be a person of faith. We must do more."

She listed off several examples of persecution around the world, including that of Catholics in Nicaragua, Uyghurs in western China and Rohingya in Myanmar, "but these examples are only a small portion," she said.

Gingrich also drew a connection between religious freedom and women's rights