Dear Friend, I want to report to you on my recent trip to Haiti. I traveled there with our board member Bishop Richard Malone of Portland, Maine, to mark the first anniversary of the earthquake that devastated the capital city of Port-au-Prince and so much of that beautiful country. The last time I attended an [...]
Read the rest of this entry »
Dear Friends, January gets its name from the Roman god Janus who is often depicted as two-faced, not in a deceptive way, but in a way appropriate for the beginning of the new year. He looked both backward and forward. That is what we are doing at Catholic Relief Services during a January that is [...]
Read the rest of this entry »
Dear Friend, Catholic Relief Services has always been changing during my many years here, never standing still. Often this is because we are working to see how we can better carry out our mission, how we can better serve the poor of the world, and how we can better serve you as you fulfill the [...]
Read the rest of this entry »
Dear Friend, “What would you do?” It is such a simple question. What would you do if you knew that the child standing next to you on the sidewalk was about to dart out into traffic? You would stop her, of course. It is a better question to ask than “What should I have done?” [...]
Read the rest of this entry »
Dear Friend, This time of year brings the end of summer vacations and a return to the routines of school. The rituals associated with Back to School season are familiar and reassuring: new clothes, school supplies, book bags and lunch boxes to go along with our new teachers and classrooms. But what is routine to [...]
Read the rest of this entry »
Dear Friend, As we commemorate our nation’s independence and its values of liberty and justice for all, it is a shocking fact that slavery and human trafficking have been experiencing a dramatic resurgence in recent years. Trafficking in persons is the coerced use of people as a form of commerce, in slave labor and extreme [...]
Read the rest of this entry »
Dear Friend, Our commemoration of Mother’s Day offers us an opportunity to acknowledge the great contribution of women in our lives. From our own mothers, who gave us life and nurtured us as we grew, to our grandmothers, sisters, wives, daughters and friends, we all can be grateful for the love and wisdom women bestow [...]
Read the rest of this entry »
Dear Friend, Each year, we as Church commemorate the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus during Holy Week and our celebration of Easter. This year, we will gather in prayer against the backdrop of the suffering of our brothers and sisters after the disasters in Haiti and Chile. Archbishop Timothy Dolan, the chairman of Catholic [...]
Read the rest of this entry »
Dear Friend, It comes as no surprise that the tragic earthquake in Haiti has attracted an enormous amount of media attention. In my own interviews, I’ve been asked by reporters how I account for the incredible and generous response of the American people to this disaster. To my mind, part of it is the proximity [...]
Read the rest of this entry »
Dear Friend, I have just returned from Haiti. The destruction in Port-au-Prince is pervasive. Building after building has crumbled to a pile of rubble. Amid the broken cityscape, thousands of suffering people mourn for the dead, search for the missing and seek help for the injured. The agony is overwhelming. I have not seen a [...]
Read the rest of this entry »
You are currently browsing the CRS Voices blog archives for the Letters From Former CRS President, Ken Hackett feature.
Advent Africa Asia Christmas Economy Emergency Response Gospel Haiti Latin America Lent Middle East ORB Peace in Sudan Photo of the Week Protecting Rights Protection Saint Sudan Universal Declaration of Human Rights fair trade
BLOG RSS
Help us spread the word of CRS: Join our growing online communities, find us on: