Carl Anderson and Knights of Columbus to Receive Path to Peace Award

NEW YORK, Oct. 10, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The 2016 Path to Peace Award will be presented to the Knights of Columbus and Supreme Knight Carl Anderson by Archbishop Bernardito Auza, apostolic nuncio and permanent observer of the Holy See to the UN, on Wednesday, Oct. 12, at Manhattan's The Pierre hotel.

The award is sponsored by the Path to Peace Foundation, which was founded 25 years ago to support the work of the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations. It will be conferred on Anderson and the Knights for the organization's life-saving work on behalf of Christians and other persecuted minorities in the Middle East and for "their humanitarian work throughout the world."

The Path to Peace Board of Directors "wanted to acknowledge the Knights' powerful leadership in seeking to help restore peace in the region ravaged by ISIS, assist the victims to get their lives back together and to create the necessary conditions for peace," said Archbishop Auza, who serves as president of the Path to Peace Foundation.

Archbishop Auza added: "Through the Supreme Knight's vigorous leadership, the Knights of Columbus not only has been responding to the cries for help coming from the Middle East and elsewhere but used their resources to put together a compelling 300-page report on the violence against Christians in the Middle East that compelled U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to declare what was happening to Christians, Yezidis and other religious minorities in the region a genocide," said Archbishop Auza.

Carl Anderson spoke at the United Nations at a Holy See-sponsored conference in April, and he has testified several times on Capitol Hill on this issue in the last year.

"The Knights of Columbus and I are honored to receive this award," Anderson said. "Assisting those who are suffering persecution for their faith is an integral part of the history of the Knights of Columbus, and so it was natural for us to take up this cause."

Anderson added: "We applaud our government for designating this persecution as genocide, but there is still much to do. While the Knights of Columbus continues to raise money to support those who have been targeted by this persecution, we are also insisting that our government and the international community work to ensure equal rights for Christians and all people in the region and direct aid specifically to those groups that were targeted for genocide."

Past recipients of the Path to Peace Award include UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali (1993), former President Corazon C. Aquino of the Philippines (1995), and former President Lech Walesa of Poland (1996).

SOURCE Knights of Columbus