Andrew Bennett has been named ambassador for Canada's Office of Religious Freedom, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced today.

"Around the world, violations of religious freedom are widespread and they are increasing," Harper said In a speech at the Ahmadiyya Muslim community centre and mosque in Vaughan, Ont.

"Dr. Bennett is a man of principle and deep convictions and he will encourage the protection of religious minorities around the world so all can practise their faith without fear of violence and repression."

Bennett, a Catholic, is dean of Augustine College, a Christian liberal arts college in Ottawa. He has a PhD in politics from the University of Edinburgh and a master of arts in history from McGill University in Montreal.

Bennett wrote his doctoral thesis on comparing separatists and nationalist movements in Quebec, Scotland and Catalonia.

After graduating, he went to work for the deputy minister of intergovernmental affairs. He later worked at the Export Development Corporation, and at the Privy Council Office.

Harper first promised the new branch of the Foreign Affairs Department during the last federal election campaign.

"This was a platform commitment, to create an office of religious freedom, to make the protection of religious freedom of vulnerable religious minorities a key pillar of Canadian foreign policy," Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, who attended the announcement, told reporters on Monday.

Harper told the story of meeting Shahbaz Bhatti, a Christian cabinet minister from Pakistan whom the prime minister described as someone who took great risks to defend persecuted religious minorities in his country, including his fellow Christians. Three weeks after that meeting, Bhatti was assassinated in Islamabad, Harper said. A militant Islamist group took responsibility for his killing.

It has been said that Bhatti was the inspiration for the founding of the Office of Religious Freedom.

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Christian college dean named to head religious freedom office