NEW YORK — His Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros of America opened the 61st Annual Awards Dinner of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation on Wednesday evening, September 23, with a prayer of thanksgiving for the Foundation and for the man who created it more than six decades ago. This year’s Appeal of Conscience Award went to FedEx President and Chief Executive Officer Raj Subramaniam.
> Read: Archbishop Elpidophoros’s full invocation
“We give You thanks, O Creator of Heaven and Earth, for the witness of truth, righteousness, and understanding that the Appeal of Conscience Foundation has brought to our world since its inception, under its intrepid leader, our beloved Rabbi Arthur Schneier,” the Archbishop prayed as the evening began at The Pierre Hotel in Manhattan.
Greeting “my dear Rabbi Schneier” and the friends of the Foundation, he asked divine blessings upon the Rabbi and his life’s work, and upon the evening’s honoree for his contributions to “connecting our world in the causes of peace, global health, and philanthropy.”
In June 2022, Raj Subramaniam became only the second chief executive in the history of FedEx, succeeding the company’s founder, Fred Smith. He was born in Trivandrum, now Thiruvananthapuram, in the southern Indian state of Kerala. He earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from IIT Bombay, a master’s in chemical engineering from Syracuse University and an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin. He joined FedEx in 1991 as an associate marketing analyst. Over three decades he held posts in Asia and North America, led FedEx Express as its President and CEO, and served as President and Chief Operating Officer of the corporation before taking the top job.
> Previously: Archbishop Elpidophoros gives benediction at Appeal of Conscience Foundation gathering
“Raj Subramaniam is being recognized for his international visionary leadership and steadfast commitment to connecting people worldwide through innovation and service,” Rabbi Schneier said in announcing the award. “Under his stewardship, FedEx has advanced a culture of social and global responsibility and international cooperation that reflects ACF’s mission.”
Subramaniam said: “I am honored to receive the Appeal of Conscience Award from Rabbi Schneier and the Appeal of Conscience Foundation. At FedEx, we believe that connecting the world through trade and innovation does more than move goods—it builds bridges, fosters international cooperation, and brings communities closer together. We are committed to leveraging our global reach to build a more connected and unified world.”
The Trustees of the Foundation had one more honor to bestow that night, and they had managed to keep it a secret from Rabbi Schneier himself. To his surprise, they presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award honoring more than six decades of work for religious freedom and understanding among faiths.
It is a life that began in Vienna on March 20, 1930. Arthur Schneier survived the Holocaust as a boy in Budapest, and the Foundation’s account of his life records the vow he made in those years: if he lived, he would work for a world where people of every faith could live side by side. He came to the United States in 1947, received his rabbinical ordination from Yeshiva University and in 1962 became senior rabbi of Park East Synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. He still holds that pulpit at 96.
President Bill Clinton awarded him the Presidential Citizens Medal in 2001, describing him as “a Holocaust survivor who has devoted a lifetime to overcoming forces of hatred and intolerance.” Three years earlier, Clinton had named him one of three American religious leaders to open a dialogue on religious freedom with China’s President Jiang Zemin. In 2008 the Rabbi welcomed Pope Benedict XVI to Park East, the first papal visit to a synagogue in the United States.
The Ecumenical Patriarchate has known him as a friend for decades. In February 1994 the Appeal of Conscience Foundation and the Ecumenical Patriarchate co-sponsored the Conference on Peace and Tolerance in Istanbul. Its Bosphorus Declaration carries the signatures of His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, Rabbi Schneier, Mehmet Nuri Yılmaz, then president of Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs, and Cardinal Roger Etchegaray.
In 2008 the Order of St. Andrew the Apostle, Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, presented the Rabbi with its Athenagoras Human Rights Award. A year later he received Patriarch Bartholomew at Park East Synagogue, the only Jewish house of worship His All-Holiness visited during his 2009 Apostolic Visit to the United States. And last September, as the Ecumenical Patriarch concluded his most recent Apostolic Visit, a farewell luncheon hosted by Archbishop Elpidophoros with Archons John Calamos, John Koudounis and Yannis Sianis was also held in gratitude to Rabbi Schneier.
The Appeal of Conscience Foundation grew out of the struggle for religious freedom behind the Iron Curtain. In January 1965, Rabbi Schneier and Senator Robert F. Kennedy presided over a demonstration for Soviet Jewry at Park East Synagogue, across the street from the Soviet Mission. Within the year the Rabbi had drawn a Jesuit editor, two Protestant ministers and a former congressman into the new Foundation, and in 1966 its first interfaith delegation traveled to Moscow and Leningrad.
From the start he drew executives, clergy and diplomats of every faith into the work. Its guiding principle, that “a crime committed in the name of religion is the greatest crime against religion,” echoes the Berne Declaration of November 1992. That month, the Foundation brought together Catholic, Serbian Orthodox and Muslim leaders of the former Yugoslavia in Switzerland, among them Patriarch Pavle of Serbia, to call for an end to the bloodshed.
In December 2000, the Foundation issued at the United Nations a call to stop the desecration of holy sites. The following May, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 55/254, condemning attacks on religious sites and calling on states to protect them.
Its honors have gone to heads of state and to moral leaders across the world. Recipients of its World Statesman Award include Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union; Václav Havel, the dissident playwright who became president of Czechoslovakia; and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The Appeal of Conscience Award has honored civil rights leader Coretta Scott King; last year’s recipients were Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Nigerian business leader Tony Elumelu.
Karen Schneier Dresbach, the Foundation’s Executive Vice President and Rabbi Schneier’s daughter, spoke of “the alarming and surging rates of attacks on religious institutions and people of faith in the United States,” in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, shrines and other houses of worship: “The Appeal of Conscience Foundation is in action,” she said, “funding security measures to protect houses of worship, pursuing tough federal legislation and prosecution, creating even stronger alliances with the top faith leaders throughout the world, and educating our youth in our Respect the Other program. It’s past time for dialogue. We believe in action.”
At the center of that effort is Stand Up Sunday, which she called “an incredible initiative, now in its second year.” The Foundation organizes it in partnership with Robert Kraft’s Blue Square Alliance Against Hate. Kraft received the Appeal of Conscience Award in 2022. First observed on September 7, 2025, the day returns this year on Sunday, October 18. Parishes can find information at appealofconscience.org.
“With millions of people of faith coming together in a few weeks for Stand Up Sunday, I’m sure you won’t want to feel left out,” she said. “So where will you be on October 18? We are counting on you to join us.”
Two years ago to the day, on September 23, 2024, the Foundation presented Archbishop Elpidophoros with an Appeal of Conscience Award at its 59th gala, in the same hotel. Rabbi Schneier cited at the time the Archbishop’s “outstanding dedication to inter-religious cooperation to advance peaceful co-existence and mutual acceptance.” Archbishop Elpidophoros now serves as a Trustee of the Foundation.
