"Conscience, Relativism and Truth: The Witness of Newman"
Archbishop Anthony Fisher, OP (Sydney)
Response: Thomas Farr (President of the Religious Freedom Institute, Washington, D.C.)
These talks were given as part of the Thomistic Institute Conference "Newman the Prophet: A Saint for Our Times" which was part of the official program for the canonization weekend of John Henry Cardinal Newman and held at the Angelicum in Rome on October 12, 2019.
Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP,
He was born in Sydney on 10 March 1960. After graduating with first-class honours, Archbishop Fisher practised law at Clayton Utz in Sydney. He took leave from his legal job and backpacked around Europe to discern his vocation. Archbishop Fisher made his perpetual vows for the Dominicans on 18 February 1987, and was ordained a priest at Holy Name Parish, Wahroonga, on 14 September 1991.On 18 September 2014, Pope Francis appointed Bishop Anthony the ninth Archbishop of Sydney. His installation took place at St Mary’s Cathedral on Wednesday, 12 November 2014. In 2015, Pope Francis appointed Archbishop Fisher to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He was also appointed an honorary member of the Pontifical Academy of St Thomas Aquinas. He has continued as a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life.
Thomas Farr,
He serves as President of the Religious Freedom Institute, a non-profit that works to advance religious freedom for everyone, both as a source of individual human dignity and flourishing, and as a source of political stability, economic development, and international security. A leading authority on international religious freedom, Dr. Farr served for 28 years in the U.S. Army and the U.S. Foreign Service. In 1999 he became the first director of the State Department's Office of International Religious Freedom. He subsequently directed the Witherspoon Institute's International Religious Freedom (IRF) Task Force, was a member of the Chicago World Affairs Council’s Task Force on Religion and U.S. Foreign Policy, taught at the National Defense University, and served on the Secretary of State’s IRF working group. From 2008 – 2018 Dr. Farr was Associate Professor of the Practice of Religion and World Affairs at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. He also directed the Religious Freedom Project at Georgetown’s Berkley Center. A PhD in History from the University of North Carolina, Farr is a senior fellow at the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University. He serves as a consultant to the U.S. Catholic Bishops Committee on International Justice and Peace; on the boards of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, Christian Solidarity Worldwide-USA, and Saint John Paul the Great Catholic High School; and on the boards of advisors of the Alexander Hamilton Society, and the National Museum of American Religion. Farr teaches regularly at the U.S. Foreign Service Institute.
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