Thank you very much. Thank Thank you very much. Professor Glendon stole my Hubert Humphrey line. But I would, I would say the same thing my mother would believe that nobody else would. But I'm appreciative. Anyway, it's a real honor and a pleasure to attend this summit and to have the opportunity to say a few words to you all here tonight about religious liberty. But before I do that, some personal thanks, commendations, and congratulations are in order. First of all, I want to thank Dean Cole for inviting me and for the warm hospitality that has been extended to Martha and and me during our visit. I also want to commend Dean Cole for launching the religious liberty initiative. It was truly an inspired decision, and is already making a great contribution to the furtherance of this important right. We should also thank the dean and Stephanie Barkley and everybody else who worked hard to put together this truly impressive program. And we should thank the all star cast that they somehow managed to recruit to come here in the maybe the hottest summer that Rome has had for a while and it gets pretty hot here in Rome almost every summer. And finally, I want to extend my personal congratulations to this year's Prize recipients, Professor Stephen Smith and Professor Maryann Glendon they are truly among the leading scholars in this field in the entire world. I have learned so much from their work, and I'm sure that many others here today would say the same thing. As this summit makes clear, religious liberty is an international problem. But I do think that we Americans can take special pride in our country's contribution to the development of a global consensus, at least on the level of international agreements, in support of this fundamental right here in Rome, history is all around us. The hotel in which my wife and I are staying looks out over the Roman Forum. And as a result, I find my thick myself, thinking about the proud civilization that was centered here two millennia ago. And as I think back, I also think ahead, and I wonder what historians may say centuries from now about the contribution of the United States to world civilization. One thing I hope, they will say, is that our country after a lot of fits and starts and ups and downs eventually showed the world that it is possible to have a stable and successful society in which people of diverse faiths live and work together harmoniously and productively while still retaining their own beliefs. This has been truly an historic accomplishment. But as the remnants of the classical past incessantly, tell us here in Rome, no human achievement is ever permanent. And therefore we can't lightly assume that the religious liberty enjoyed today in the United States, in Europe, and in many other places will always endure. Religious liberty is fragile, and religious intolerance and persecution have been recurring features of human history. We can't escape thinking about that here in Rome either. This, after all is where St. Peter and St. Paul and countless other early Christians were martyred. If we look at the Colosseum today, we see a tourist attraction we might see men dressed up as gladiators prancing around outside the Colosseum, but in its day, it was the killing place. It was the place where hundreds who knows who knows how many Christians were torn apart by wild beasts, to the delight of spectators, citizens of a rich, powerful and technologically advanced state, with little regard for the inherent worth of human life. Near the Colosseum, we can see the place where Nero was said to have used Christians as human tortures to light up his garden parties. I think we're all aware of the persecution of the early Christians. But as Pope Francis has reminded us, more Christians are killed for their faith in our time. Then in the bloody days of the Roman In Empire, and of course, Christians have by no means been the only victims of religious persecution. Rome reminds us of that as well. On October 16 1943, German police and soldiers raided the old Jewish ghetto they rounded up 1000 Jews and sent them off to Auschwitz, where almost all of them perished. On October 9 1982, terrorists attack the Great Synagogue with hand grenades and machine gunfire. If we look around the world today, we see that people of many different faiths face persecution because of religion. When ISIS occupied in northern Iraq, 1000s of Yazidi men and boys were slaughtered, and 1000s of women and girls were raped and forced into marriage with ISIS fighters. In Nigeria, Christians have been under conscious constant constant attack. In Egypt, numerous Coptic churches have been attacked, and many worshippers have been killed. In India, Hindu and Muslim groups have brutally assaulted each other since independence. And in China. Of course, there is the unspeakable treatment of the Uyghurs. These are just a few examples, pardon me for leaving others out. But I think you'd get the point. religious persecution is alive and well in the world. And in many places, it is a violent life and death thing.