Catholic Relief Services

The Rome-based World Food Program, an emergency aid agency of the United Nations, and Baltimore-based Catholic Relief Services, the international humanitarian organization of the U.S. Roman Catholic bishops, have agreed to an unprecedented sharing of resources.An agreement signed yesterday spells out a "division of labor" between the two groups when both are responding to an emergency, thus "cutting through duplication and red tape," said Michael A. D'Adamo, deputy director of the Catholic agency.

Malaria is an enormous and tragic problem - that can be beat. It takes the life of a child every minute in Sub-Saharan Africa, and a million people die from malaria each year. It also stifles economic development, as malaria prevents children from attending school and adults from working. Today is World Malaria Day, and I am pleased to celebrate the lives saved and enriched by recent attention and investments. Not that many years ago, this would be an occasion for hand-wringing and lamenting the many victims of this disease and wishing we could get the world to do more.

Archbishop Edward T. O'Meara, who had been president and chairman of the Baltimore-based Roman Catholic agency assisting war and disaster victims worldwide, died in Indianapolis Friday after a long illness. He was 70.The prelate, who also headed the Indianapolis archdiocese, was diagnosed last summer with pulmonary fibrosis, a lung disease.He died at home, where he had been bedridden since Jan. 5, when he asked to be discharged from Indiana University Hospital, the Rev. David Coats said.The illness caused him to resign in September as head of Catholic Relief Services, which has its headquarters in Baltimore.

Roman Catholic bishops convening in Baltimore joined students and volunteers Sunday to transform a Harbor East hotel corridor into a food-packing operation to benefit West African orphans and battered women. Measuring out thousands of plastic bags of dry soy protein, rice, vitamins and dried vegetables, enough to feed six people, the volunteers worked alongside the humanitarian effort's sponsors, Catholic Relief Services and Stop Hunger Now, as well as the bishops. "This is so much more fun than sitting in meetings," said Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas of Tucson, Ariz., who is also Catholic Relief Services board chairman.

MICROCREDIT HAS become a buzzword in international development, as well as in domestic efforts to help welfare recipients and the working poor find a solid footing in the economy. But the strength of this idea is best understood in the stories of poor families.As The Sun's Ernest F. Imhoff reported from Ecuador, microcredit programs designed to provide small loans focus zTC primarily on women, but end up benefiting families and communities. Catholic Relief Services, the Baltimore-based agency featured in Mr. Imhoff's stories, loaned $3.8 million last year to some 33,500 borrowers.

Catholic Relief Services is a welcome name for millions of poor people in Third World countries -- as visible with its humanitarian aid as the Red Cross and the United Nations.So much for the world.In Baltimore, its headquarters across from the Greyhound bus station is hardly noticed, its global mission almost unknown despite the agency being the first, oldest and most influential of three relief groups to move here since 1989.Lutheran World Relief and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, both in New York City, recently have planned to move here within three years, joining Catholic Relief Services (CRS)

For five days last month, David Holdridge traveled by jeep among thousands of starving refugees in northern Iraq. He covered some 3,000 miles and hardly slept. Not long after his arrival, time came to lose meaning for him."Days have no significance in a situation like that. For a thousand bucks, I couldn't have told you whether it was Wednesday or Saturday," says the official with Catholic Relief Services, a Baltimore-based international aid organization.Holdridge, who monitors Europe, Asia and parts of Africa for CRS, was in Iraq to get a first-hand look at the grim conditions there.

Robert W. "Bob" Roche, a former Peace Corps volunteer who later worked in Africa with Catholic Relief Services, died Jan. 12 of undetermined causes at Sanctuary at Holy Cross, a Burtonsville senior living community. The Columbia resident was 61. "We are awaiting the results of an autopsy as to the cause of death," said his son, Robert L. Roche, who lives in Washington. Robert Winslow "Bob" Roche was born and raised in Monroeville, Pa., where he graduated in 1968 from Gateway Senior High School.

Laurence J. Bourassa, whose long career as an international aid worker took him to countries across Asia and Africa, died of kidney and respiratory failure Thursday at Long Green Center, a long-term care facility in Baltimore. He was 75. Mr. Bourassa's life was most notably shaped by two episodes, friends and colleagues said - his stint in Somalia with the first group of Peace Corps volunteers, which first gave him a taste for overseas humanitarian work, and two harrowing years he spent in Cambodia during the bloody era of the infamous killing fields.

Jean Gartlan, a retired journalist and a Catholic Relief Services program director who worked in 1960s refugee relief in southern Africa, died of cancer Sunday at Stella Maris Hospice. She was 88 and lived in Mount Vernon. "She was really a Renaissance woman," said Ken Hackett, former Catholic Relief Services president. "She was literary and traveled the world. She did some remarkable behind-the-scenes things, and ... you never knew she was there. " Born in New York City and raised in Washington Heights, she earned an English degree at the College of Mount St. Vincent and a second bachelor's degree, in journalism, from Columbia University.

Jean Gartlan, a retired journalist and a Catholic Relief Services program director who worked in 1960s refugee relief in southern Africa, died of cancer Sunday at Stella Maris Hospice. She was 88 and lived in Mount Vernon. "She was really a Renaissance woman," said Ken Hackett, former Catholic Relief Services president. "She was literary and traveled the world. She did some remarkable behind-the-scenes things, and ... you never knew she was there. " Born in New York City and raised in Washington Heights, she earned an English degree at the College of Mount St. Vincent and a second bachelor's degree, in journalism, from Columbia University.

Robert W. "Bob" Roche, a former Peace Corps volunteer who later worked in Africa with Catholic Relief Services, died Jan. 12 of undetermined causes at Sanctuary at Holy Cross, a Burtonsville senior living community. The Columbia resident was 61. "We are awaiting the results of an autopsy as to the cause of death," said his son, Robert L. Roche, who lives in Washington. Robert Winslow "Bob" Roche was born and raised in Monroeville, Pa., where he graduated in 1968 from Gateway Senior High School.

As a teenager attending a Catholic school in Hong Kong in the 1960s, Carolyn Y. Woo never imagined that her studies were helping prepare her to one day lead Baltimore-based Catholic Relief Services, one of the world's largest international humanitarian relief agencies. Woo took over this month as CRS' chief executive officer and president, replacing 18-year veteran Ken Hackett. Woo, 57, brings an academic and business background to her job, having most recently served as dean of the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business.

Two years ago, an enormous earthquake devastated Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, and the surrounding areas. While the cameras are gone, Haiti's recovery continues. Having recently visited Port-au-Prince, we can report that much has been accomplished - though the most important successes are not so obvious. As images of death and destruction dominated the post-disaster news coverage, compassionate Americans donated hundreds of millions of dollars to humanitarian organizations like ours, Baltimore-based Catholic Relief Services.

The Sudanese government is preventing aid organizations from delivering food and health services to hundreds of thousands of people in the conflict-ridden Darfur region of the country, according to Baltimore-based Catholic Relief Services, one of the largest remaining groups there. The crackdown has left displaced populations at risk of disease and malnutrition as the government increases military operations in the area. Catholic Relief Services was forced to suspend its work in West Darfur state after the government told it to leave Jan. 20, the organization's country director, Darren Hercyk, said in an interview.

On an ordinary day, Katie Goldsmith would be monitoring political and security conditions in West Africa from Catholic Relief Services' Baltimore headquarters. But on Thursday, with Haitians still waiting for international help in recovering from the earthquake that leveled Port-au-Prince, Goldsmith was working the phones at the agency, trying to find a port where it could begin landing food, medicine and supplies in the Caribbean nation of 9 million. "We've heard that the commercial port in Port-au-Prince is nonoperable," Goldsmith said in between calls.

The Baltimore Development Corp.'s recommendation yesterday that RLJ Development LLC develop Baltimore's proposed headquarters hotel brought good news for RLJ's partner, Catholic Relief Services, which has been seeking a new home for more than three years. The proposal by Robert L. Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television, and Quadrangle Development Corp. provides 200,000 square feet of office space for Catholic Relief Services. The international assistance agency, which employs 350 people in its Baltimore offices, had considered moving out of the city, from its home on West Fayette Street, in its search for a larger headquarters.

Michael Anthony D'Adamo, deputy director of Catholic Relief Services, whose work took him to Angola, Somalia, Rwanda and Ghana, died Oct. 5 of AIDS at his Charles Village residence. He was 38.Mr. D'Adamo, who joined the Baltimore-based relief organization 1987, was considered an expert on famine and disaster relief.Earlier this year, Mr. D'Adamo completed an agreement, which was signed in Baltimore, between the Rome-based World Food Program, an emergency aid agency of the United Nations, and CRS, the international humanitarian organization of the U.S. Roman Catholic bishops.

Underwear was nobody's biggest concern in March when fires raced through a refugee camp in Nepal, leaving behind a smoldering expanse of ash and ruin. Food, water, shelter, pants and shirts ranked higher for the 10,000 inhabitants who'd lost everything. But thanks to a relief effort that Cockeysville native Robin Contino helped coordinate, these refugees from neighboring Bhutan got all that plus undergarments, school uniforms and other valued items that could easily have been forgotten amid the chaos.

As Myanmar's military government has thwarted international efforts to deliver aid to thousands of people affected by last week's cyclone, Baltimore-based organizations are raising money to help victims and waiting to see if partner organizations will be able to gain entry into the devastated country. The political hindrance "adds a level of frustration" for aid workers, said Paul Rebman, director of disaster response for Baltimore-based World Relief. The aid group has partnered with five other organizations, two of which already had staff on the ground in Myanmar - a fact that helped to ease their assistance efforts, Rebman said.