The week is really a chance for the Church in the United States to consider, as we sometimes say, our first freedom as Americans — to live out our faith in public and serve the good of all, and to reflect on how religious freedom helps us to think about all the other freedoms that we have.

One of the things I really appreciate about it is the opportunity to remind ourselves that religious freedom is rooted in our human dignity. It is our human dignity that is being protected when we are seeking to live out our faith in public, and we have the right to seek God, to look for who God is to us, and to do that in freedom.

As for why it is a whole week, there are a lot of issues that our country is facing, both domestically and internationally, and so this is a chance for us to pray through several of those that are of particular focus.

Yes. We get questions about it every year — “When is the Religious Freedom Week material coming out? Are you ready to share it?” We do hear from people in the pews who are interested in the novena that goes along with Religious Freedom Week, and we get great engagement on the novena. That is a great example of the people of God taking this up and incorporating it into their lives of faith and their prayer life.

We also have Scripture reflections, and this year Religious Freedom Week falls right after the 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time. Those readings from the lectionary are a really great opportunity to think about how we are called to witness to the faith — how does Christ call us to do that? We hear from parishes that priests will sometimes include Religious Freedom Week in their homilies or consider it as they’re thinking about preaching for the days ahead.

Each year, the USCCB’s religious liberty committee puts together an annual report that looks at both the opportunities and challenges of religious freedom — the status of religious freedom in the United States and around the world. These novena intentions are examples drawn from those challenges and opportunities that the bishops identify at the end of each year.

Sometimes it’s a chance for Catholics to think about issues we might not always consider as religious freedom issues. Immigration enforcement is a huge human dignity issue. The bishops have spoken prophetically about accompanying our brothers and sisters who are immigrants and doing so with dignity and humanity. And then there’s this additional religious freedom dimension, in that many immigrants have been detained and haven’t had access to the sacraments. So there are all of these levels relating to why our human dignity is essential in our call to be Catholics in public life.

Yes. I do think that our call as the bishops’ conference is to help the people of God in their dioceses think about the broad spectrum of the way human dignity is lived out and protected. I would also say that there are moments when there is renewed attention to the issue. Our committee chairman, Archbishop Alexander Sample, has spoken very beautifully recently about the antisemitism that has been experienced by our Jewish brothers and sisters, and how it is very incompatible with our Catholic life, faith, and our understanding of religious freedom.

These opportunities — sometimes fortunately and sometimes unfortunately, depending on the issue — really bring it to the attention of Catholics, reminding them that this is a way we live out our faith.

Catholics in the United States have a lot of religious freedoms enshrined in law, so we have great protection — and we ought to be attentive to that, and then also utilise it to speak out on behalf of our brothers and sisters around the world who don’t have those protections.

When you look at what’s happening in Nigeria, for example, or across Africa, where Christians and people of faith generally are really targeted in a particular way, it is our responsibility as Catholics to care that our brothers and sisters don’t have the opportunity to seek God in a free way. We ought to be both praying for a change of hearts and also contacting our legislators, engaging our foreign policy colleagues to say: this is not right.

We need to be leveraging the good of the United States and our belief in the freedom of all people to participate in their societies in a holistic way. We need to offer our voices and lend our support for that to happen.