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If you can’t find The Catholic Sun’s managing editor for the next couple of weeks, it’s because he’s in the Middle East, as evidenced in the video above. (Also here.)

Last Spring, J.D. Long-García, was named a winner of the distinguished 2008 Egan Award for Journalistic Excellence. He is one of a handful of Catholic journalists throughout North America whose reporting on humanitarian and social justice issues earned him this great honor.

Over the past four years, J.D. has written extensively on the immigration crisis: He has trudged through the unforgiving desert, followed humanitarian groups seeking to aid the migrant, spent time with Border Patrol, met with southern Arizona landowners, and even profiled a day in the life of a Minute Man. He has gone to the border to experience and report, first hand, the lives impacted in this ongoing humanitarian crisis.

Closer to home, his ability to temper his courage with sensitivity has yielded some fantastic news and feature stories, including topnotch reporting from last year’s immigration march and a look at how Arizona’s immigration laws are affecting families and churchgoers, just to name a couple.

As a result of this award, Catholic Relief Services will be taking J.D. and the other recipients on an “all-expense paid trip to visit the Middle East to see CRS-supported programs that aid Iraqi refugees. The trip will provide the journalists with an opportunity to witness first-hand the work of CRS, to meet the people uprooted from their homes by violence in Iraq, and to write about the plight of Iraqi refugees ‘living in limbo,’” according to a news release from the organization.

Stay tuned for regular blog updates, photos and videos from the Middle East.

-Rob