Crs

Happy birthday to Catholic Relief Services, the Baltimore-based agency that dispensed some $260 million in food, relief and development to the neediest countries in 1991, the last year for which figures are available, and that just turned 50.It has grown and become more essential every year. The arrival of its headquarters here in 1989 -- opposite the bus station on West Fayette Street -- puts Baltimore in the forefront of the war against famine and brutality throughout the world.This is a far cry from the small agency started by American bishops in 1943 to send aid to Poles and other Catholic Europeans displaced by Hitler's madness in World War II. Now it sends aid to roughly half the countries of the world (depending on what is a country)

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.

Ten-year-old Herdine reacted quickly when the ground beneath Port-au-Prince began shaking Jan. 12. At home with her baby brother, she raced to his crib, scooped him up and ran outside seconds before the family house collapsed. Since the earthquake, Herdine has been smiling like a typical girl her age, said Robin Contino of Catholic Relief Services: "She just knows she's happy, she has her brother, she's alive." "But," Contino added, "she doesn't want to close her eyes." Contino, a clinical social worker, was dispatched to Haiti to address the emotional trauma of the Baltimore-based relief agency's large staff, which includes 300 Haitians and a core group of expatriates.

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.

SAQUISILI, Ecuador -- The indigenous people cling to the high Andes Mountains, coming down as deliberately as the glaciers from the nearby 19,348-foot Cotopaxi volcano.As they have for generations, the Quechua-speaking descendants of the Incas herd sheep on wind-swept hills. They grow crops on terraced slopes of fertile lava turned to soil. At times they descend the 2,000 feet to go to market in this town in the Central Highlands.The hardy mountaineers endure harsh sunlight near the equator and cold, stormy nights.

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.

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)

An article Saturday incorrectly characterized the financial relationship between Catholic Relief Services and sculptor Timothy Blum and his associates, who were to have built a 33-foot cross for Pope John Paul II's visit to Baltimore. In fact, CRS and Mr. Blum have not yet reached an agreement.The Sun regrets the error.

KEN HACKETT ISN'T sure what he's going to say to Pope John Paul II when they meet Sunday afternoon. But whatever it is, he won't be speaking for himself, but for Catholic Relief Services workers all over the world.The relief agency's 2,000 employees work in 79 countries, delivering food and technical assistance to the poor, sometimes in dangerous circumstances. Just last May the agency's project manager in Burundi, Dimitri Lascaris, was killed in the line of duty.Mr. Hackett will lead about a dozen CRS staff members to the basilica on Cathedral Street for the papal audience.

Catholic Relief Services is backing away from its plan to move its headquarters from Baltimore to Catonsville, saying it will consider expansion in the city after all. Officials of the agency, which is the international relief arm of the U.S. Roman Catholic Church, said this month that they had made a proposal to build new headquarters on a portion of 40 acres of wooded land off Gun Road, owned by the Oblate Sisters of Providence. But Pat Johns, CRS' director for administrative services, said yesterday that proposals from city officials about five potential Baltimore sites - along with a visit Friday from Mayor Martin O'Malley - have made the agency's officials more interested in staying in the city.

They're poised to help, but how? The disaster relief agencies based in Baltimore, and those who donate to them, say they are ready to provide whatever assistance they can to the victims of the disaster in Japan. But for the moment, they are largely in a wait-and-see mode. "There is a role for relief efforts, for sure," said Bill Canny, director of emergency operations for Catholic Relief Services, one of several relief agencies headquartered here. "But right now, they don't need a team flying in. " Unlike some recent disasters, the earthquake followed by a tsunami and a still-threatening nuclear reactor emergency have struck a developed country with a strong infrastructure — from a well-prepared and well-financed government and military to experienced and well-funded relief institutions such as the Japan Red Cross.

Ten-year-old Herdine reacted quickly when the ground beneath Port-au-Prince began shaking Jan. 12. At home with her baby brother, she raced to his crib, scooped him up and ran outside seconds before the family house collapsed. Since the earthquake, Herdine has been smiling like a typical girl her age, said Robin Contino of Catholic Relief Services: "She just knows she's happy, she has her brother, she's alive." "But," Contino added, "she doesn't want to close her eyes." Contino, a clinical social worker, was dispatched to Haiti to address the emotional trauma of the Baltimore-based relief agency's large staff, which includes 300 Haitians and a core group of expatriates.

Ten-year-old Herdine reacted quickly when the ground beneath Port-au-Prince began shaking Jan. 12. At home with her baby brother, she raced to his crib, scooped him up and ran outside seconds before the family house collapsed. Since the earthquake, Herdine has been smiling like a typical girl her age, said Robin Contino of Catholic Relief Services: "She just knows she's happy, she has her brother, she's alive." "But," Contino added, "she doesn't want to close her eyes." Contino, a clinical social worker, was dispatched to Haiti to address the emotional trauma of the Baltimore-based relief agency's large staff, which includes 300 Haitians and a core group of expatriates.

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.

Selling food aid funds relief work Catholic Relief Services agrees that the practice of selling a portion of U.S. food aid to raise cash to fight poverty, a practice known as monetization, is inefficient ("A bold gesture," editorial, Aug. 21). We wish we didn't have to sell food. But failing to do so would put at risk hundreds of thousands of people CRS serves in more than 15 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The money generated by selling food aid is used to fund agricultural development, primary health care, clean water and basic sanitation projects - programs that help people living in extreme poverty pull themselves up one notch and ensure a better future for their children.

The silence on the fourth floor of this nondescript brick building on West Fayette Street belies reality. It is close to 4 p.m. on the day before a holiday weekend. But beneath the surface, big things are happening here at the world headquarters of Catholic Relief Services, between cubicles and offices, through the static of phone calls and the strokes of furiously typed e-mails. At CRS yesterday, a tired-looking president and chief executive Ken Hackett is on the elevator up, about to recognize two employees with certificates for their tireless work this week.

Bishop John H. Ricard, who oversees parishes serving 85,000 Catholics in Baltimore, was named yesterday to head Baltimore-based Catholic Relief Services, the world's second-largest nonprofit provider of foreign aid.The auxiliary bishop, one of three in the Baltimore Archdiocese who serve under Cardinal William H. Keeler, is known for his efforts to assist the city's poor."

Holding hands, with heads bowed, solemn circles of colleagues and friends of slain, missing or endangered Rwandans prayed fervently yesterday at the Baltimore headquarters of Catholic Relief Services for an end to the violence in the African nation.Dave Piraino, a CRS employee whose wife is from Rwanda, spoke emotionally of his sister-in-law and her 10 children who were killed there last month.T. J. Ryan read the names of three dead and 43 missing CRS employees in Rwanda.And relief worker Bettina Malone, who was evacuated four weeks ago, spoke through tears of reaching a colleague in Rwanda by phone on Thursday.

Catholic Relief Services is backing away from its plan to move its headquarters from Baltimore to Catonsville, saying it will consider expansion in the city after all. Officials of the agency, which is the international relief arm of the U.S. Roman Catholic Church, said this month that they had made a proposal to build new headquarters on a portion of 40 acres of wooded land off Gun Road, owned by the Oblate Sisters of Providence. But Pat Johns, CRS' director for administrative services, said yesterday that proposals from city officials about five potential Baltimore sites - along with a visit Friday from Mayor Martin O'Malley - have made the agency's officials more interested in staying in the city.

Catholic Relief Services, the international relief arm of the U.S. Roman Catholic Church that has made Baltimore its headquarters for the last 13 years, is seeking to move its offices and up to 350 jobs to Catonsville. The agency, which coordinates emergency aid and development in 80 countries from 209 W. Fayette St., has proposed building a new headquarters on a section of 40 wooded acres owned by the Oblate Sisters of Providence. Pat Johns, CRS' director for administrative services, said the membership committee of the order is to vote on the proposal next month.