PORTLAND — Bishop Richard Malone and all United States Bishops have announced that the 14 days from June 21, the memorial of Saints Thomas More and John Fisher, martyrs, to July 4th, Independence Day, will be dedicated to a nationwide “Fortnight for Freedom — a great hymn of prayer for our country.”

The Fortnight was established in response to numerous recent actions taken by the government which interfere or prevent institutions and individuals from acting in accordance with their deeply-held moral beliefs, according to a news release.

The Fortnight will be focused on education and awareness, and special events are planned to highlight the importance of defending religious liberty. On Saturday at 7 p.m. at Talbot lecture hall in Luther Bonney Hall (96 Falmouth St.), on the University of Southern Maine’s Portland campus, Kristina Arriaga, executive director of the Becket Fund for Religious Freedom, will deliver an address titled “One Nation Under God With Liberty and Justice For All: Historical Reflections on Religious Liberty.”

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty is a nonprofit, public-interest legal and educational institute that protects the free expression of all faiths. Arriaga has a master’s degree from Georgetown University and joined the Becket Fund in 1995. She also worked as an intergovernmental relations officer at the Department of Housing and Urban Development for Secretary Jack Kemp. She was an advisor to the U.S delegation to the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva, Switzerland, as an expert of human rights issues in Cuba and Latin America.

Bishop Malone invites people of all faiths to attend.

More information from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on the Fortnight is available at www.fortnightforfreedom.org.