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Hot Fudge for Breakfast, Freedom for All: Katrina Lantos Swett

January 27, 2026 by Cara Meredith

Katrina Lantos Swett AT IRF SUmmit 2024

Editor's Note: At Patheos, we're highlighting Faith & Media Initiative (FAMI) Fellows whose work brings thoughtful, lived faith perspectives into today's public conversations. These profiles showcase leaders helping broaden understanding of belief, dignity, and community in the world we share.

Katrina Lantos Swett can offer you a recipe for her homemade hot fudge sauce one minute and implore you to embrace the need for pluralistic, prosperous, and peaceful societies the next.

It’s not hard for this personable and brilliant woman—whose many awards, degrees, and roles in human rights and international religious freedom reflect her expertise—to do this, because she knows exactly who she is and where she comes from.

As the daughter of two Holocaust survivors, including her father, Tom Lantos, the first and only Holocaust survivor to ever serve in Congress, a deep sense of responsibility is instilled within Lantos Swett. This responsibility is both to the past and to the present, she says – to those who came before her and to those who face persecution and suffering now and in the future.

A Legacy Forged in Responsibility and Resilience

Katrina Lantos Swett

Lantos Swett is quick to speak with admiration of her parents, whom she describes as “noble and admired individuals” who faced the horrors of hatred and targeting, including, for her late father, in slave labor camps. Through their experiences, her mother – who at 94, is still alive and for whom Lantos Swett is the primary caregiver – and her father became powerful advocates for the fundamental rights of all people.

This fundamental commitment to human dignity ultimately led their second daughter to establish the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice. Founded in 2008 to honor her father, following his death, the organization has become a distinguished and respected voice on key human rights concerns ranging from advancing rule of law globally and fighting for Internet freedom in closed societies, to combating the persistent and growing threat of antisemitism and Holocaust denial.

This, of course, is only part of Lantos Swett’s growing legacy. As the former Chair and Vice Chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), Dr. Lantos Swett also teaches Human Rights and American Foreign Policy at Tufts University. She currently serves as Co-Chair of the Board of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK), the Budapest-based Tom Lantos Institute, and the International Religious Freedom (IRF) Summit. She also serves on a number of advisory boards.

In the many spaces to which she gives her time and lends her voice, Lantos Swett is both a bridge-builder and a peacemaker, among other roles. After all, these are her promises to keep – a line she both borrows and lives by when she often quotes 20th century poet and New Hampshire native Robert Frost. In one of Frost’s most famous poems, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” the woods are described as “lovely, dark, and deep,” for here, there are “promises to keep” and “miles to go” before one can sleep. For Lantos Swett, who also calls the Granite State home, the poem was a favorite of her father’s, but one that holds significant meaning and personal action to her.

What does it then mean to advocate for human rights and global religious liberty? To Lantos Swett, there is a considerable body of research showing that societies that provide robust religious freedom protections tend to be more stable. They serve neither as incubators for extremism, nor for social hostility, and in these environments, women hold higher socioeconomic statuses.

According to Lantos Swett, “When people learn to live harmoniously and respectfully with those who do not share their basic religious beliefs, they are demonstrating a civic maturity that is essential for pluralistic, prosperous, and peaceful societies.” For the most part, the United States has done very well in this regard, but when it comes to freedoms, both domestically and internationally, “you can’t really have freedom of speech, freedom of the press, or freedom of association without protecting freedom of religion.” These freedoms are inextricably linked, and from these, Freedom of Conscience becomes “the foundational wellspring from which these other vital rights emerge.”

As Deseret News noted in a 2022 feature, however, something else is at stake – which is to say Lantos Swett herself. Her unique religious identity and personal beliefs compel her to advocate for human rights, especially when those rights are under assault.

Quick to laugh, and perhaps even quicker to smile, Lantos Swett describes herself as “kind of a unicorn.”

“There aren’t too many deeply committed people of Jewish heritage that are also Latter-Day Saints,” she recently said in an interview. “I’m privileged to combine powerful faith traditions in my own life.” Just as she sees the similarities between the two people groups – both of their prolonged persecution and of their “peculiarities,” in the sense of their identities as chosen, special people, according to ancient text – Lantos Swett calls it a privilege to find a home in the two traditions.

Just as the mother of seven and grandmother of sixteen, soon to be eighteen, grandchildren, celebrates the traditional Jewish holidays of Pesach, Hanukkah, and Purim, among others, she teaches Gospel Doctrine at her local ward and feels blessed to have been sealed to her husband in the temple. She is a fervent reader of Jewish sages and saints, including the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, and considers it a “sad privilege” to have recently attended the funeral of Jeffrey Holland, president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who was also key in her own conversion story.

But Katrina Lantos Swett also knows where she’s going in the days and years ahead. Her experience as a Faith and Media Initiative (FAMI) fellow allowed her to participate in several LinkedIn Live presentations and podcasts, co-write a couple of Op-eds for different media outlets, and participate in a “really fantastic gathering in Oxford with interesting voices from the academic community, as well as different experts in other areas.”

She speaks with fondness of the inaugural group of forward-thinking leaders who value interfaith cooperation and champion religious freedom. When she thinks about her time in the fellowship, she is quick to notice how their collective body of work is about bringing this vibrant world, which is already the foundation of a meaningful life, into popular media and culture in a healthier, more honest, and fair kind of way.

Diane Foley and Rachel Goldberg-Polin, Courageous Mothers and Hostage Advocates, Honored with 2025 Lantos Human Rights Prize
From left: Katrina Lantos Swett, Diane Foley, Rachel Goldberg-Polin, Annette Lantos Tillemann-Dick
Credit: Lantos Foundation/Babette Rittmeyer

Bridging Faith, Identity, and Global Advocacy

But Dr. Lantos Swett also thinks about what it means to move forward with courage and sacrifice, as individuals actively work toward peace and justice.

“When we have been able, for ourselves, to come to a deep enough awareness of what we believe and hold dear, I think we will act differently,” the humanitarian leader mused. “Even if we have to engage, and defend and stand our ground, we will do it with a spirit that is undergirded with an inner peace. And when we do this, we will view our opponents not as enemies, but with recognition of their humanity and with a degree of compassion.”

When Dr. Lantos Swett thinks about the future, however, she can’t help but look “generationally forward,” as she calls it. She’s grateful that her oldest daughter, Chelsea, agreed to return to the U.S. from Denmark five and a half years ago in order to become Executive Director of the Lantos Foundation. According to Lantos Swett, “All the ideas I have and all the balls I drop, she picks up and helps me actualize them.” As honest as she may be at any given moment, the truth is that they are partnering together to honor a proud family legacy that has changed the world.

And as the two of them work to further the mission of the Lantos Foundation, no doubt it’ll sometimes happen over a small bowl of mocha ice cream with homemade hot fudge sauce.

Preferably, Dr. Lantos Swett recommends, for breakfast.

2/2/2026 7:12:29 PM

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About Cara Meredith

Cara Meredith is a writer, speaker, and editor who writes at the intersection of spirituality and culture. A former high school English teacher and nonprofit outreach director, her writing has appeared in numerous print and online publications. The author of "Church Camp" (Broadleaf) and "The Color Of Life" (Zondervan), she holds a Masters of Theology and lives in Oakland, California with her family. She writes the Patheos column Coloring Outside the Lines.

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