“One little girl of about 12 told one of my colleagues that when she and her family first came to the refugee camp, the children all told her to go to the building that said “Catholic Relief Services.” She said she didn’t know what it was, and as a Muslim she had never heard the word ‘Catholic’ before. But when she walked in and saw what we were doing for the children, she said, ‘I just assumed the word Catholic meant help.’ What a blessing it is that we can be known as the people who help, because that is what the Gospel calls us to do.” —Joan Rosenhauer, vice president, Catholic Relief Services
These words caused “chicken skin,” not only when they were spoken at the Red Mass, Jan. 20, in the Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Peace, but over and over again as Joan Rosenhauer shared them with other audiences during her visit here Jan. 18-24.
The Catholic Relief Services official “talked story” with the Catholic Chuukese community, parish faith formation and social ministry folks, the Catholic Charities’ staff and board, Catholic school board members and Catholic school students from elementary through high school, and college students and faculty. As she traveled around the Islands, including a stop in Kalaupapa, Joan showed how CRS “help” is blossoming here.
At Chaminade University, for example, we saw a promising CRS-funded project promoting sustainable nutrition in Chuuk that involves young nurses from Hawaii and an educational community garden for Micronesians in Honolulu. Some Chaminade students from Guam have become enthusiastic CRS ambassadors. They promote CRS’s Rice Bowl campaign against world hunger, encourage fellow students to support “free trade” products, assist the homeless at local shelters, and help local youth in public housing strive for a college education.
Other CRS activities in Hawaii include classroom lessons telling the stories of families struggling for survival in far-off lands like Nicaragua, Niger, Afghanistan and Iraq. The homepage of our diocesan website, www.catholichawaii.org, features a moving CRS video about young women in Africa empowered by a successful passion fruit farming venture.
Joan’s Hawaii visit generated excitement about CRS’s excellent educational materials that reveal to us the meaning of Jesus’ words in this year’s Red Mass Gospel, “Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me.”
CRS challenges us to respond to this call so that everyone will assume the word “Catholic” means “help.”
“What a blessing it is that we can be known as the people who help, because that is what the Gospel calls us to do.”
Mahalo!
Your friends at the Office for Social Ministry
