Chris Herlinger of Church World Service Wins Egan Award

[Lesley Crosson]

Chris Herlinger of Church World Service Wins Egan Award

NEW YORK, June 11, 2008--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 (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 Contacts
Lesley Crosson, (212) 870-2676, lcrosson at churchworldservice.org 
Jan Dragin - 24/7 - (781) 925-1526, jdragin at gis.net