CRS is Your Agency

Catholic Relief Services was founded by the bishops of the United States to work with the universal Church.

CRS' mission is rooted in the Gospel and in the teachings of the Catholic Church. This is what distinguishes CRS from some of the other well-known American humanitarian organizations, like CARE, Save the Children or Mercy Corps.

CRS is owned by and accountable to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Because of this unique relationship, CRS is the official international humanitarian agency of the U.S. Catholic community. This distinguishes CRS from other Catholic-led agencies that do international humanitarian work.

CRS is part of and acts within the "ecclesial community" that is the universal Catholic Church. Our closest and most frequent collaborators are the local Catholic dioceses and their Caritas agencies, as well as groups and institutions run by religious and lay groups.

Did You Know

CRS programs touch the lives of more than 100 million people in more than 100 countries around the world.

CRS provides emergency relief in the wake of disasters—both natural and man-made—and offers hope for the future through development projects. Wherever we work, we seek to help the poor realize their human dignity and achieve improved and sustainable standards of living.

CRS is efficient and effective: 93 percent of the agency's expenditures go directly to programs that benefit the poor overseas.

CRS' relief and development work is accomplished through programs of emergency response, treatment and prevention of HIV and AIDS, health, agriculture, education, microfinance, and peacebuilding.

Notable CRS Milestones

Establishment in 1943:

Catholic Relief Services was founded in the crucible of war. Originally called War Relief Services, the agency was created in 1943 by the U.S. bishops to help resettle Polish refugees fleeing from Soviet gulags and to assist war orphans and other suffering people. After the war, CRS assisted with the rebuilding of Europe, and in the ensuing years began responding to the needs of poor families and communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Resettling Immigrants:

Under the terms of the U.S. Government's Displaced Persons Act, CRS helped 95,380 people resettle in the United States between 1948 and 1951. Staff and volunteers met the new immigrants as they arrived in the country, helped them clear U.S. Customs and made special arrangements with hotels and hospitals for those who were sick or unable to proceed to their final destinations.

Biafran Civil War:

More than 1 million people were displaced during the 1968 Biafran War (a war of secession in what is now east and southeast Nigeria). During the famine that followed, CRS provided life-saving emergency aid despite a total blockage of seaports and roads in the east. CRS organized more than 100 risky nighttime airlifts of food and medicine.

Southeast Asian Refugee Crisis:

Through the late 1970s and early 1980s, CRS responded to the desperate needs of the refugees in Southeast Asia. In 1980, CRS established the Nong Khai refugee camp in northern Thailand on the Laotian border, which held over 45,000 Lao and Hmong refugees.

Ethiopian Famine:

By the end of the Ethiopia famine (1982-1985), CRS had distributed 36,000 tons of food and was feeding 750,000 Ethiopians. CRS handled the distribution of 90 percent of all U.S. government food that entered the country and committed $15 million of privately contributed funds to the emergency.

Rwanda Genocide:

During the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, CRS staff, operating out of Burundi and Uganda, delivered emergency relief to thousands of traumatized people. The tragedy in Rwanda moved CRS to re-examine our role throughout the world. As a result, CRS began approaching our work and relationships through a "justice lens" to ensure programming not only meets immediate needs, but also works to overcome conflict and build peace through right relationships.

Hurricane Mitch:

More than 12,000 died when Hurricane Mitch hit Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador in 1998. More than 40 inches of rain fell in just five days, causing swollen rivers to break their banks, ripping out bridges, and destroying roads, crops and homes. Within the U.S. Catholic community, 182 dioceses contributed more than $29 million to support the CRS emergency response.

Tsunami:

In response to the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, CRS mounted the largest relief effort in its history—a five-year, $200- million-plus commitment to emergency and long-term reconstruction assistance in India, Indonesia and Sri Lanka. CRS built more than 11,000 permanent homes, and supported more than 84,000 people with cash-for-work activities, nearly 270,000 people with health care and direct medical services, and nearly 80,000 people with water infrastructure projects, among other activities.

Response to the HIV and AIDS pandemic:

Since 1986, when CRS initiated its first HIV project in Bangkok, Thailand, the agency has expanded HIV programming to 52 countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America. With an expenditure of more than $120 million in the 2008 fiscal year, CRS operates more than 250 HIV projects in the poorest and most vulnerable areas of the developing world. The CRS-led AIDSRelief consortium is providing treatment and care to more than 370,000 people in nine countries, with more than 135,000 of these patients receiving life-saving antiretroviral treatment, a regimen that allows many with HIV to lead normal lives.

Pope Benedict XVI on the Church's Ministry of Charity

Caritas in Veritate

Charity is love received and given. It is "grace" (cháris). Its source is the wellspring of the Father's love for the Son, in the Holy Spirit. Love comes down to us from the Son. It is creative love, through which we have our being; it is redemptive love, through which we are recreated. Love is revealed and made present by Christ (cf. Jn 13:1) and "poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit" (Rom 5:5). As the objects of God's love, men and women become subjects of charity, they are called to make themselves instruments of grace, so as to pour forth God's charity and to weave networks of charity. This dynamic of charity received and given is what gives rise to the Church's social teaching, which is caritas in veritate in re sociali: the proclamation of the truth of Christ's love in society. (5)

Charity goes beyond justice, because to love is to give, to offer what is "mine" to the other; but it never lacks justice, which prompts us to give the other what is "his", what is due to him by reason of his being or his acting. I cannot "give" what is mine to the other, without first giving him what pertains to him in justice. If we love others with charity, then first of all we are just towards them. Not only is justice not extraneous to charity, not only is it not an alternative or parallel path to charity: justice is inseparable from charity, and intrinsic to it. Justice is the primary way of charity or, in Paul VI's words, "the minimum measure" of it, an integral part of the love "in deed and in truth" (1 Jn 3:18), to which Saint John exhorts us. On the one hand, charity demands justice: recognition and respect for the legitimate rights of individuals and peoples. It strives to build the earthly city according to law and justice. On the other hand, charity transcends justice and completes it in the logic of giving and forgiving. The earthly city is promoted not merely by relationships of rights and duties, but to an even greater and more fundamental extent by relationships of gratuitousness, mercy and communion. Charity always manifests God's love in human relationships as well, it gives theological and salvific value to all commitment for justice in the world. (6)

Only if we are aware of our calling, as individuals and as a community, to be part of God's family as his sons and daughters, will we be able to generate a new vision and muster new energy in the service of a truly integral humanism. The greatest service to development, then, is a Christian humanism that enkindles charity and takes its lead from truth, accepting both as a lasting gift from God. Openness to God makes us open towards our brothers and sisters and towards an understanding of life as a joyful task to be accomplished in a spirit of solidarity. (78)

Awareness of God's undying love sustains us in our laborious and stimulating work for justice and the development of peoples, amid successes and failures, in the ceaseless pursuit of a just ordering of human affairs. God's love calls us to move beyond the limited and the ephemeral, it gives us the courage to continue seeking and working for the benefit of all, even if this cannot be achieved immediately and if what we are able to achieve, alongside political authorities and those working in the field of economics, is always less than we might wish. God gives us the strength to fight and to suffer for love of the common good, because he is our All, our greatest hope. (78)

Deus Caritas Est and the Church's Ministry of Charity

The Church cannot neglect the service of charity any more than she can neglect the Sacraments and the Word. (22)

The Church's deepest nature is expressed in her three-fold responsibility: of proclaiming the word of God (kerygma-martyria), celebrating the sacraments (leitourgia), and exercising the ministry of charity (diakonia). These duties presuppose each other and are inseparable. For the Church, charity is not a kind of welfare activity which could equally well be left to others, but is a part of her nature, an indispensable expression of her very being. (25, citing the Congregation for Bishops, Directory for the Pastoral Ministry of Bishops Apostolorum Successores [22 February 2004], 194, Vatican City 2004, p. 213.)

Yet, while professional competence is a primary, fundamental requirement, it is not of itself sufficient. We are dealing with human beings, and human beings always need something more than technically proper care. They need humanity. They need heartfelt concern. Those who work for the Church's charitable organizations must be distinguished by the fact that they do not merely meet the needs of the moment, but they dedicate themselves to others with heartfelt concern, enabling them to experience the richness of their humanity. (31)

The Code of Canon Law, in the canons on the ministry of the Bishop, does not expressly mention charity as a specific sector of episcopal activity, but speaks in general terms of the Bishop's responsibility for coordinating the different works of the apostolate with due regard for their proper character. Recently, however, the Directory for the Pastoral Ministry of Bishops explored more specifically the duty of charity as a responsibility incumbent upon the whole Church and upon each Bishop in his Diocese, and it emphasized that the exercise of charity is an action of the Church as such, and that, like the ministry of Word and Sacrament, it too has been an essential part of her mission from the very beginning. (32)

Homily Helps

February 21, 2010 | February 28, 2010 | March 7, 2010 | March 14, 2010
March 21, 2010

First Sunday of Lent

February 21, 2010

I. In the mountains of Lesotho, a small country completely surrounded by South Africa, many children are devastated when one or both parents die from AIDS-related causes. Renang Moleko is a 17-year-old whose father died of AIDS when he was 9. His mother was forced to find work in another village. Renang had to leave school to care for the family's livestock. He could only afford to eat one meal a day. Catholic Relief Services helped start a project involving the whole village in supporting orphan children like Renang. Education and training opportunities, nutritional support and healthcare enabled the children to enroll in school again and receive uniforms and school supplies. Renang was taught to start a garden which now feeds him daily and provides some extra produce for him to sell. He has hope for a better future.

II. As we begin our Lenten journey of penance and renewal, the story of the temptations of Jesus reminds us that Lent is a time to choose once again to turn to God.

Jesus' temptations are all about wealth, power and esteem. In the United States, we are often tempted by these aspects of life. We find ourselves spending time and effort to acquire wealth and then use it to wield power and win esteem from others. Yet so many people in the world lack even the basics of life.

III. Lent demands that we examine our choices in life. What is really important? What has lasting value? The traditional penitential practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving help us refocus our lives on our relationship with God, and with our brothers and sisters who are also children of that same Father. The Church asks us to make the Option for the Poor a commitment in our lives. When we resist the daily temptations of wealth, power, and esteem, we begin to stand in solidarity with the whole human family.

Through its programs for orphans and vulnerable children, CRS gives us the opportunity to help children like Renang to live a better life. This Lent, let us choose to learn about our suffering brothers and sisters and support them.

Second Sunday of Lent

February 28, 2010

I. In a small community in Bolivia, farmers Eusebio and Victoria Ortega-Velasquez struggled to survive in a harsh climate which limited their agricultural production and made life difficult for them and their children. Through the support of Catholic Relief Services they formed a cooperative with other farmers, learned how to diversify their crops and transformed their farm. New production technology taught them how to preserve the environment while they increased their crop yield and quality. Today they feel life is much better for them. Their children are studying and will have a brighter future.

II. In the gospel story of the Transfiguration, Jesus takes with him his three closest disciples. He wants to offer them a glimpse not only of who he is, but also what the resurrection would be about. Jesus wanted to strengthen them for the scandal of the cross and their own future suffering.

The memory of the Transfiguration would always give the disciples hope. Their trials as a struggling infant church would transform them into people of hope.

III. We are that same Church. If we are faithful, we will suffer, but we are also promised the glory of a new and transformed life. Hope gives us the strength we need.

Eusebio and Victoria Ortega-Velasquez needed hope. They were ready to make the sacrifices to feed their family. Catholic Relief Services gave them the hope and strength which ultimately transformed their work, their lives and their family.

The Church teaches us that we must care for God's creation. Eusebio and Victoria learned new techniques to improve crop yields and get the most out of the land. They worked with others to learn how to ensure that their farming techniques would not harm the environment. In the process of helping them transform their land into a more productive source of income, CRS gave them the tools and support to responsibly conserve the land for future generations.

Lent calls us to prayer, fasting, and giving. The Transfiguration gives us hope that these sacrifices are not in vain. CRS, with our help, gives hope to our brothers and sisters to transform their lives and the world as well.

Third Sunday of Lent

March 7, 2010

I. In Afghanistan many communities lack access to education opportunities. Schools are often miles away, too far for the children to walk to class. As a result, children stay home and work, losing the chance for an education. Catholic Relief Services works with local groups to open community-based schools where the entire village supports the education process by providing classroom space, contributing to the teacher's salary, and forming parent-teacher associations to support the school. Improved education opportunities give children the chance for a brighter future.

II. Today's first reading from Exodus is the story of the burning bush and the call of Moses to save his people. God tells Moses to lead the people from slavery to a land of plenty. God tells Moses his name is "I am who am". This name describes the dynamic presence of God among the people. He will not abandon them but will be present with them on their journey. God tells Moses that if he remains faithful to the call he will succeed and change his people forever.

III. Lent is a time for each of us to remember our call. God calls us to help save His people once again. The lack of education opportunities is a kind of slavery that can limit our ability to develop all the gifts and talents God gives us. The Church teaches us that all are called to community and participation. The villagers who sacrifice in Afghanistan so that children may receive an education have heard this call and have kept the faith necessary to help pull others out of oppression. CRS, through our support, is helping lead thousands of Afghani children forth into a new life, free of the shackles that have held them down for generations. We who have had the benefit and blessing of educational opportunities must hear the call to help in some way so that all God's people will share the same blessings. By our prayers, fasting, learning and giving during Lent we unite with those who are our sisters and brothers by supporting them in their long journey to freedom.

Fourth Sunday of Lent

March 14, 2010

I. In the mountains of northwestern Nicaragua, a group of twelve women with the help of a Catholic Relief Services' microloan, formed a cooperative called FEM (Fundacion Entre Mujeres, or Foundation Among Women). Previously they and their husbands barely made a living in agriculture as individual family farmers. As a cooperative, they are able to rent more land to grow coffee and other crops. They also received support on the issues of education, literacy, health, violence and domestic abuse through CRS and the local diocese. CRS provided a new wet mill, which is a machine that separates the coffee bean from the fruit pulp. The women now have a growing business selling a high quality Fair Trade organic shade-grown coffee. They have paid back their initial loan and the entire village has a bright future.

II. In today's gospel the Prodigal Son does not appreciate all that he is given. He wastes his father's gifts on a completely self-centered life. When he finally has nothing left he realizes his sin against his father. He returns asking to live out his life as a slave, but the father accepts and forgives him immediately. The story of the Prodigal Son tells us that God gives us another chance to use the gifts we have, not just for ourselves, but for others as well.

III. We in the developed world are the Prodigal Son. In many ways we have been given much and at times may waste our Father's wealth while others suffer want. The Church teaches us about the Dignity of Work and the Rights of Workers. The women of FEM just needed the opportunity to make their hard work fruitful. That came from American Catholics through CRS.

Microloans are relatively small amounts of money, like $25, that can make a huge difference by giving people a chance and the support to run their own businesses. How do we spend $25? That money can give those in need better nutrition, housing, healthcare, education and a future full of hope.

Each year the Catholic Relief Services Collection is taken up during Lent to help us connect our prayers, sacrifices, and giving to others who live in the poorest places of our world. We are one world. We have one Father.

Fifth Sunday of Lent

March 21, 2010

I. In northern Ethiopia where drought is very common, Ato Teklu Hagdu lives with his wife and eight children, struggling to survive. Often he had to leave his family to search for work in other areas. Catholic Relief Services helped build a water system in his village and gave farmers training in irrigation, tools, seeds and other help to improve harvests. Today Ato is feeding his family, expanding his farm and saving money for the future, which will help him get through the dry seasons. He feels more in control of his life.

II. Jesus in the gospel shows compassion to the woman caught in adultery. We might wonder why the woman is the only one condemned by the authorities when her unnamed partner in the act seemingly suffers no consequences. The double standards, which lead to injustices heaped on women, were a part of the culture of the day in Jesus' time. Jesus does not ignore the sin, but focuses instead on our tendency to judge others when we ourselves are all sinners. God alone is the judge, a forgiving and compassionate judge, who calls us to repentance and a new way of life, avoiding our past sins. Compassion leads to confronting unjust systems, transforming ourselves, and new ways of living.

III. The people of Ethiopia seem also to be unjustly condemned to lives of poverty and struggle. The Church teaches us that we all have rights and responsibilities in our society. The way of Jesus is to show compassion to a brother or sister who is in need and support them. Our responsibility to show compassion and love makes a difference in transforming lives through CRS programs that allow people to receive such a basic right as water.

Lent is ending soon and now is the time to increase our efforts of prayer, fasting, and giving so that we may more fully enter into the mysteries of Holy Week. Let us this week make an extra prayerful sacrifice through Operation Rice Bowl as we live in solidarity with our Ethiopian sisters and brothers.

Charitable Giving Strengthens Parish Finances

What is the financial effect on parishes whose members give to CRS and other charities? Intuitively, you would expect a decrease in the amount of available funds given to the parish. In fact, precisely the opposite is true.

According to a Faith and Philanthropy study, households that give to religious congregations can be divided into two groups: those that give to congregations only and those that give to both congregations and other causes.

The first group—that gives to congregations alone—gives an annual average of $1,154 and account for 6.3 percent of annual giving.

And the second group—households that give to both religious and other organizations—gives an average of $2,247 per year, accounting for 81.2 percent of all giving.

According to the study, "households that give to both their congregations and other organizations give more to their congregations than do those that give only to their congregations ($1,391 compared to $1,154)."

Source: Faith and Philanthropy: The Connection Between Charitable Behavior and Giving to Religion, published by The Independent Sector (Washington, DC), 2002