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Chris Herlinger of Church World Service wins Egan Award

June 11, 2008

NEW YORK--Church World Service's Chris Herlinger has won an Egan Award for Journalistic Excellence from Catholic Relief Services for photography on assignment in the troubled region of Darfur, Sudan.

The 2008 Egan winners were announced May 22 at the Catholic Media Convention in Toronto, Ontario. Named after Eileen Egan, CRS' first professional staff layperson, the award recognizes journalists who have covered humanitarian and social justice issues for Catholic publications in the United States.

Herlinger, a Church World Service communications officer and a freelance writer, shot the award-winning photo of Muslim girls in a West Darfur refugee camp classroom (see photo at http://www.crs.org/newsroom/egan-award/winners/2008.cfm) on a September 2007 trip he took to the Darfur region of western Sudan on behalf of humanitarian agency Church World Service. It appeared in the National Catholic Reporter in September 2007.

Herlinger also won a 2008 DeRose-Hinkhouse Award from the Religion Communicators Council, an interfaith association of religion communicators, for the article "Return to an Unsettled Land," which accompanied the photo.

Besides Sudan, Herlinger has covered emergencies in Kosovo, El Salvador, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Liberia, Dominican Republic, Iran, Iraq and Indonesia for CWS and for other members of the Action by Churches (ACT) International network. Other reporting from his humanitarian assignments has been published by The Christian Century, the Harvard Divinity Bulletin and Ecumenical News International, a Geneva-based news agency.

Herlinger, 48, last month received a Master's degree in international relations from Cambridge University in England. He also holds a Master of Arts degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where he studied as a Bush Foundation Leadership Fellow, and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn. He was a resident fellow at Harvard Divinity School in the spring of 2005 and currently is a visiting fellow at Yale Divinity School.

Winners receive a trophy and a trip to the Middle East to report on CRS-supported work with Iraqi refugees uprooted from their homes by the violence there.

Other winners of the 2008 Egan Award (http://www.crs.org/newsroom/egan-award/winners/2008.cfm) are Barbara Fraser, National Catholic Reporter; J.D. Long-García, The Catholic Sun; Marylynn G. Hewitt, SFO, The Michigan Catholic; Paul Jeffrey, Catholic News Service; Amanda Finnegan and Meghan Hurley, The Loquitur.

Media Contact:
Lesley Crosson, CWS/New York, 212-870-2676;
Jan Dragin, 781-925-1526;

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