Lidiia Batig is a member of the Acton Institute’s 2024 Emerging Leaders class. She is a religious journalist, theologian, with a comprehensive background in interreligious studies, media, and education. Lidiia is currently pursuing a PhD in Jewish-Christian marriages at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome.
She holds MAs in Religious Journalism from the Ukrainian Catholic University and Journalism from Ivan Franko Lviv National University. An alumna of the Russell Berrie Fellowship in Interreligious Studies, she has also studied at the Paideia European Institute of Jewish Studies in Stockholm.
Lidiia has served as a Media Intern for the John Paul II Center for Interreligious Dialogue, managing social media and communications. Her engagement with the Cardinal Bea Centre for Judaic Studies and the John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family has deepened her expertise in interfaith dialogue.
Lidiia founded her own project, “The School of Interreligious Journalism”. The purpose of this initiative was to equip journalists with skills and tools when covering interfaith issues, promoting dialogue and fighting propaganda and fake news in the media. In 2018 “The School of Interreligious Journalism” received the prestigious Intercultural Achievement Award in the category “Innovation” from the Federal Ministry Republic of Austria (Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs).
Her personal motto, inspired by Martin Buber, is: “We cannot avoid using power, cannot escape the compulsion to afflict the world, so let us, cautious in diction and mighty in contradiction, love powerfully.”