| Roosevelt
Institute Honors Drinan’s Human Rights Efforts
Professor
Robert Drinan, S.J., joined a distinguished ensemble when he
was awarded a 2003 Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute
Four Freedoms Award last November. The awards, which commemorate
the four freedoms President Roosevelt asserted are essential
to democracy–freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom
from want, and freedom from fear–have been bestowed upon
such luminaries as Harry
Truman, John F. Kennedy,
Jimmy Carter, Thurgood
Marshall, Coretta Scott King, Mikhail Gorbachev, and the Dalai
Lama.
 |
| Professor
Robert Drinan, S.J., addresses
audience members gathered
at the Franklin D. Roosevelt
Presidential Library in Hyde
Park, N.Y., after he was awarded
the Franklin and Eleanor
Roosevelt Institute’s Freedom
of Worship Medal. |
Drinan received the institute’s
2003 Freedom of Worship Medal for his work in the human rights
arena and in Congress. “As
an ordained Jesuit priest, author, and professor of law at Georgetown
University, Father Robert Drinan has become one of the most
significant advocates for human rights of his generation,”
said the Roosevelt Institute statement. “Father Drinan
has assumed leadership positions on some of the most defining
issues of our day.”
In his acceptance speech, Drinan
said that “the right to worship is now more important than
ever before in human history. The threat of wars based on religions
is now forbidden by global law, but the moral and spiritual
forces that are pressing to outlaw wars based on religious differences
must be intensified. That is why the emphasis on the freedom
of worship is a transcendent call for the sacred brotherhood
that must permeate the entire globe.”
The 2003 awards also featured
another Georgetown Law connection: Former Sen. George Mitchell
(L’61) was awarded the Four Freedoms Medal, which was given
in addition to individual medals that were awarded in commemoration
of each of the four freedoms.
The
medals were presented at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential
Library in Hyde Park, New York. |
