By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service
ROME – Whether they are tiny, all-volunteer organisations or agencies with hundreds of professional employees working around the globe, Catholic charities are called to be expressions of God’s love and the Catholic Church’s concern for the poor, said the Cardinal-president of Caritas Internationalis.
Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Tegucigalpa, president of the confederation of 165 national Catholic charities, opened the week-long Caritas general assembly on 22 May in Rome. While a central focus of the meeting was to be new statutes that would strengthen Vatican oversight of Caritas Internationalis, the gathering also marked the 60th anniversary of the confederation, which was celebrated with a daylong trip on 21 May on a vintage steam train that boarded at the Vatican train station.
The festive atmosphere of the train trip was a contrast to the businesslike atmosphere of the general assembly, especially as it prepared to elect new officers, including a new secretary-general after the Vatican Secretariat of State decided not to give the current secretary-general, Lesley-Anne Knight, its blessing to run for a second four-year term.
“We all would have loved to continue our journey with the current secretary-general,” Cardinal Rodriguez said in his opening address. “The way she was not allowed to stand as a candidate … has caused grievance in our confederation,” especially among the women working for Caritas, he said. The Cardinal said a dialogue with the Vatican Secretariat of State about the new Caritas statutes formally began in February; because the dialogue is ongoing, he asked delegates to authorise the Caritas executive board to conclude the discussions with the Vatican and adopt provisional rules that would be in force until the next general assembly in 2015.
The opening session also featured Cardinal Robert Sarah, president of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, which was given the task in 2004 of offering guidance to Caritas Internationalis.
The Vatican called for new Caritas statutes to reflect the new role of Cor Unum, as well as the emphasis Pope Benedict XVI made in his 2005 encyclical letter on making Catholic charitable work more obviously Catholic. Cardinal Sarah told the delegates that because the Catholic Church has a hierarchical structure in which the Bishops are ultimately responsible for all activity, Bishops must be involved in promoting and overseeing any agency that claims to work in the Church’s name.
“Our charitable organisations are located within the Church and not alongside her,” the Cardinal said.
Because charity is an essential part of the Church’s mission, Cardinal Sarah said, Catholic charities have “a responsibility, a vocation and a special commitment: to be at the heart of the Church as the most beautiful and most real manifestation of her essence, namely of the charity of God.”
The point is not predominantly organisational, the Cardinal said. But agencies that act in the name of the Church must reflect the Church’s mission of bringing God’s love and promise of salvation to the world. “Today, dear friends, the tragedy of modern mankind is not a lack of clothing and housing. The most tragic hunger and the most terrible anguish is not lack of food,” he said. “It’s much more about the absence of God and the lack of true love, the love that was revealed to us on the cross.”
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican secretary of state, presided at a Mass for the delegates on 22 May and thanked Caritas Internationalis for giving concrete, practical demonstrations of the Church’s love for all people and its belief that the world is one family. The Cardinal said the new statutes for the organisation are meant to reflect “a theological reality: in full communion with Christ and the Church, manifested in the life of its members and in their personal adherence to Jesus Christ, Caritas Internationalis will be truly capable of helping make the world one family, since it is only in Jesus Christ that our true human identity and dignity is revealed to us.”
Cardinal Peter Turkson, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, told delegates on 23 May that Catholic charity workers face two dangers when it comes to sharing the good news of God’s love: one is to place conditions on people receiving charity and the other is to be excessively cautious about sharing the faith.
“In performing the work of Caritas, we need not, and should not, restrict our aid to those who share our faith,” he said, but Catholics should make sure that the services they provide “reflect the values and the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Preparing to discuss the future of Caritas Internationalis, delegates also listened to a reflection by Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher of the papal household.
He told them that loving others like Jesus loved means offering them “concrete assistance” in the form of food or healing or other forms of help in addition to sharing with them the path of salvation.
In addition, he said, “it is not enough to provide for the needs of the poor and oppressed on a case by case basis; action needs to be taken on the structures that create the poor and oppressed.”