On March 13, John Briggs, GSAS ’09 was honored by Fordham for working to solve the problems behind this crisis.

In a ceremony held in Keating Hall’s spacious first-floor auditorium, Briggs was awarded the sixth annual Swanstrom-Baerwald Award, which commemorates the partnership between Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and Fordham’s International Political Economy and Development program (IPED).

Archbishop Bernardito Auza, Apostolic Nuncio and Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, presented Briggs with the award.

“More than personally receiving the award, what was really special and motivating for me was the opportunity to meet with such an interesting group of students, professors, and bishops such a diverse group, and to have them all focus on CRS,” Briggs said.

A native of North Carolina whose parents moved his family to Guatemala to do humanitarian work when he was a teenager, Briggs returned to the United States for college. After earning an undergraduate degree in business, he briefly worked in investment banking. But after a stint in Nicaragua with the Peace Corps, he fully embraced humanitarian work, enrolling in the IPED program in 2008. His first assignment with CRS, in 2010, was in Afghanistan; in 2012 he moved to Guatemala, where he is currently head of programs for CRS.

Work in Guatemala

In remarks he delivered at the ceremony, he focused on three aspects of CRS’ work. One is the ongoing relief efforts to mitigate the damage caused by the eruption of the Volcano Fuego in June 2018, which resulted in 200 deaths. Another is implementing programs that improve people’s lives that can be expanded on a larger scale. One of them, called “Learning for Life” is a 5-year-long, $27 million project funded in part by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It provides 60,000 daily meals to primary school students who would otherwise be malnourished and susceptible to stunted social and cognitive development.

To address the issue of migration, Briggs said CRS has embraced YouthBuild, a program that has been a model for youth employment since it debuted in Harlem in the 1970s. Since young adults with little hope for opportunity are among those most likely to flee the country, CRS has worked with people such as Claudia, a 24-year-old single mother of two whose grief over her mother’s death was causing her to be depressed and neglectful of her children.

“Claudia received individual therapy from a psychologist and began to gain self-esteem and heal emotionally. She gained new life skills and new work skills. As she developed these skills and participated in community service projects, she gained confidence in her ability to set goals and achieve them,” he said.

Over the last three years, 81 percent of YouthBuild graduates have found employment, started a business, or gone back to school. He noted that CRS has established 14 really strong connections with local employers. Briggs said he’s hopeful that many of these businesses will be able to launch YouthBuild programs of their own, thus giving would-be migrants a reason to stay and build stronger communities at home.

“These are real opportunities to grow and to expand, and the connection couldn’t be clearer. Youth are at the heart of all these causes of migration. They’re the ones that suffer the most, and you have a program that directly responds to that by giving youth opportunities,” he said.

“What we’re most excited about is working with the government and businesses to find ways to further adapt the program so they can directly implement this.”

Future Challenges

Briggs said there have been significant challenges when it comes to climate change as well. In four of the six years that he’s lived in there, Guatemala has grappled with severe droughts, and the other two years weren’t substantially better.

“Every year, as we put together these project designs, we say, ‘We’re going to respond to the droughts, and we’re going to help people be stronger going forward the next year,’ and then another drought hits, and it’s even harsher,” he said.

“It’s really been frustrating, because we’re hopeful the next year will be better, and we give these families the tools to be more resilient, and sure enough, another drought hits even harder. It seems like it’s becoming a chronic, year after year issue. It doesn’t seem like it’s going to go anywhere.”

He credits his time in the IPED program with giving him the tools to grapple with complex, multidimensional work that touches on issues of politics, economics, and the environment.

“Fordham did a good job of helping prepare me to tackle those multidimensions and try to make some sense out of it, as hard as that is,” he said.

“It also expanded my awareness of the incredible potential there is for the church and key stakeholders, whether they be the government, private sector or others to really have an influential voice in this area.”

The ceremony was followed by a dinner, where the IPED program conferred the John F. Hurley, S.J. Commendation on Tom Dobbins Jr, LAW ’90, for his work as Justice and Peace Coordinator for Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York.

When Sydney Kornegay was still a teenager growing up in Columbia, South Carolina, her father took her with him to Malawi, where he was putting together a promotional video on behalf of Ministry of Hope, a Christian community-based orphan care organization.

The experience left a lasting impression on Kornegay, who is graduating this year with a master’s in international political and economic development (IPED) from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

“My dad was a journalist who was interested in stories on the edges that don’t get heard, and from the voices on the edges that don’t get heard,” she said.

“We often had people from different countries in our home, and when I first went to Malawi with him, he interviewed local people who had dedicated their whole lives to helping their communities. That just grabbed me.”

In the years since, Kornegay has visited Africa several times to help in aid efforts. In September, she and three other IPED graduates will devote themselves to projects run by Catholic Relief Services (CRS): Owen Fitzgerald will move to Madagascar, Therese Hart will move to Niger, and Jessica Way will move to Lebanon.

The four were part of a group of 20 selected from roughly 700 applicants to participate in the CRS International Development Fellows Program.

Henry Schwalbenberg, Ph.D., director of the IPED program, said the fellows program is training ground for people who have the potential to assume senior management positions in international humanitarian and development assistance. Fordham traditionally sends just two graduates, he said, so sending four makes 2018 an especially auspicious year.

“We’re providing key people that these organizations need in order to carry out the Catholic Church’s mission for international relief and development efforts,” he said.

Fordham’s relationship with CRS goes back two decades, and in fact, the heads of CRS missions in Uganda and the Philippines are IPED graduates. Fellows have gone on to assume leadership roles at other relief agencies as well.

“What makes Catholic Relief Services important is they’re the only program that has consistently had a program like this,” he said.

“In a certain sense, CRS is providing the link for people coming out of graduate school to enter this field.”

For Kornegay, her experience volunteering with groups such as the Episcopal Service Corps, which she worked with before she came to Fordham, gave her a sense of how aid should ideally be administered.

“I was looking for graduate programs that focus not just on how we make a community grow economically, but

how we consider all the different factors that make a healthy community. IPED has a more holistic critique of development,” she said.

Her fellowship, which starts in September and lasts a year, will take her to Haiti. CRS’ emphasis on empowering local partners is a big draw for her.

“There’s an emphasis on not what they can do for the community, but what the community can do for itself. I was looking for organizations that prioritize empowering local partners to carry out work, as opposed to taking a top-down approach,” she said.

A Catholic Relief Services worker aids Syrian refugees in Lebanon

Not long after arriving in Lebanon last year, Sean Kenney traveled to the country’s Bekaa Valley, where an estimated 1.5 million refugees from war-torn Syria have crossed the border to live in tent settlements dotting the dirt fields.

Kenney, a program manager with Catholic Relief Services, went to distribute food and hygiene vouchers to the refugees, who endure harsh conditions. One family had lived in a tent for more than three years, and pleaded for more support—especially during the bitterly cold winter months.

“They were very grateful for the vouchers, but the aid was simply not enough,” says Kenney, who works with local partner Caritas Lebanon to provide humanitarian relief. “They had no other source of income.”

Daily life in the Bekaa Valley settlements is arduous. Unlike neighboring countries, Lebanon has established no formal refugee camps and provides no government support. Landowners charge refugees to live in their fields, and employment restrictions make it difficult for refugees to find work.

And while Caritas Lebanon supports an effort to get more Syrian kids enrolled in Lebanese schools, the majority of refugee children receive no formal education, creating what Kenney calls a “lost generation” of Syrian youth.

A Kansas native, Kenney joined the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in 2010. Assigned to a new high school in rural Tanzania, he taught geography and organized a program that allowed students to serve as English tutors for children in a nearby village.

But he soon realized that he needed a graduate degree to further his career. In Fordham’s International Political Economy and Development program, he gained expertise in data analysis and data management along with a strong understanding of development economics. After earning a master’s degree in 2015, he interned for Catholic Relief Services, assessing the impact of a water and sanitation program at a camp for South Sudanese refugees in Uganda. Later that year, he was sent to the Middle East, where he worked on a program that promoted cooperation among pediatric palliative care providers.

In 2016, he became a program manager and joined the team in Beirut, where his responsibilities include a new project that provides food, shelter, medical support, and trauma counseling to refugees who are survivors of sexual and gender-based violence.

“This type of work can put you close to really terrible suffering,” Kenney says. “But the genuineness of the people I work with and the people I work on behalf of keeps me engaged and optimistic about my work.”

—Mariko Thompson Beck

Read more “20 in Their 20s” profiles.

Camille Tacastacas, Veronica Muoio, and Josh Voges—all of whom graduated from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences on May 21—are among approximately 25 fellows selected from hundreds of applicants for the yearlong program. Tacastacas and Voges have both been offered fellowship positions in Malawi and Rwanda, respectively. Muoio’s placement is pending.

The global fellowships typically lead to full-time positions within CRS.

“This experience is helping me expand my world,” said Tacastacas, a native of the Philippines who currently is interning with CRS in Sierra Leone. “Sierra Leone is the first place I’ve worked outside of the Philippines or the United States, so I came in with certain notions of how people are.

“This has been an exercise in shattering those labels and taking people just as they are, giving them a chance to express their whole personhood and humanity.”

In Sierra Leone, Tacastacas has been doing operations research for a project that addresses acute malnutrition in young children. A graduate of the Jesuit Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines, Tacastacas also served as a member of Jesuit Volunteer Corps prior to her Sierra Leone placement.

In Malawi, she will do research for Ubale (United in Building and Advancing Life Expectations), a USAID-funded project on food security and nutrition.

“The Jesuits at Ateneo de Manila inculcated in me the value for social justice,” she said. “That exposure to the least, the less, and the lonely made me want to marry my life’s work with the needs of the world.”

Voges, who is completing a CRS internship in Senegal, is a former Peace Corps volunteer who said he learned the value of economic development when was stationed in Morocco. Recently, he received a message from a basket weaver celebrating the economic success of a workshop that he, Voges, and and other villagers had built.

“He said he was spending the weekend at the beach with his family and friends celebrating, because they had been able to produce and sell a record number of baskets last summer,” said Voges. “He said they used the increase in revenue to purchase a truck so that the artisans would no longer have to pay each week to have the merchandise delivered to the markets.”

In Senegal, Voges has been designing an emergency behavior change intervention in Cape Verde in response to the Zika epidemic. He also coordinated a proposal for a $1.5 million USAID grant to support peace and reconciliation efforts in southern Senegal.

In Rwanda, he will work with CRS to develop community-based models to strengthen local agriculture, nutrition, and economies.

Helping local communities become self-sustaining is at the heart of the CRS mission, said Muoio.

A former Peace Corps volunteer, Muoio said, “The most rewarding part of the work was seeing our students and participants in the programs get really engaged and then go and launch programs and projects of their own—taking what we were doing in our center and bringing it out to the community to share with others.”

Muoio is an intern at the United Nations Development Programme, where she is working on issues related to gender equality around the world. Her CRS fellowship placement is pending, but she said it is likely she will work with Syrian and Iraqi refugees in the Middle East.

“Working with local partners is what CRS does best,” she said. “And they set a standard for other organizations—because the ideal in the industry to is to work yourself out of a job.”

“Climate change is real, it’s serious, and it’s worsening,” said Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia.

“There is no real scientific debate . . . The facts are rigorously established and the risks are absolutely understood—but we have confabulated a political debate in this country. This is a reflection of our money politics beyond anything else, [including]the oil, coal, and gas industries,” he said.

“But that chokehold is coming unstuck. The public doesn’t want to be owned. And they know something’s not right.”

Sachs and Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, SDB, Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, were panelists for “Our Planet’s Keeper? The Environment, the Poor, and the Struggle for Justice,” an event sponsored by Fordham’s Center on Religion and Culture on Nov. 3.

In a discussion moderated by Joan Rosenhauer, executive vice president for Catholic Relief Services, both Sachs and Cardinal Rodríguez praised Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical Laudato Si, which recognizes global warming and addresses environmental degradation.

The pope consulted more than 200 experts on these topics, yet Laudato Si has been met with strong criticism, said Cardinal Rodríguez. Some critics decry the encyclical and its condemnation of consumerism; others argue that the pope should refrain from political matters altogether.

“This is wrong,” said Cardinal Rodríguez. “The encyclical talks about global warming in passing. Its main argument is that the earth is our common home. And every house needs maintenance—especially when we live in a house that is a little old.”

Our house, the cardinal said, is in dire need of repair. “California—rationing water. In Texas, there is terrible flooding. And here in the Northeast, look at this autumn—or rather, what a beautiful summer we’re having!”

Now more than ever the world needs the church’s moral leadership, said Sachs. As for whether a pontiff’s words could change the world, he offered a historical example:

In the spring of 1963, at the height of the Cold War, an ailing Pope John XXIII vowed to devote the remainder of his papacy to establishing peace. The result was Pacem in Terris, an encyclical that urged governments to recognize their civic responsibility for the well-being of the world and to situate power relations within a moral framework.

Two months after the encyclical’s publication, President Kennedy gave the commencement address at American University. Drawing on the encyclical’s push for a geopolitical moral framework, the president called for Americans to reexamine their attitudes about peace. The starting point, he said, should be the recognition that we are all human beings.

“We all inhabit this small planet,” Sachs said, quoting Kennedy, “we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children’s future, and we’re all mortal.”

Upon hearing the “peace speech,” Nikita Khrushchev, first secretary of the Communist Party, called the U.S. envoy to Moscow and said: “That was the finest speech by an American president since FDR. I want to make peace with this man.”

Six weeks later the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was signed, and five years later came the Treaty on Nuclear Non-Proliferation.

“Framing the situation in a moral way is what pulled us back from the brink,” Sachs said. “Not game theory calculations, not talk of mutual assured destruction, not a list of what the other side has to do and here’s the red line—it was saying that we have to examine our own attitudes, because the other side is also human and they will make the same judgment.

“The encyclical played a fundamental role in shifting the world. And here we are today. It’s happening again.”

By Stevenson Swanson

One of the highlights of Pope Francis’ five-day visit to the Philippines in January was an open-air Mass in Tacloban, a city of more than 200,000 people that had been devastated by Typhoon Haiyan in November 2013. He told the crowd of several hundred thousand gathered at the airport that he came to Tacloban because he wanted to express his closeness to “our brothers and sisters who endured suffering, loss, and devastation.”

He did not talk about the environment or climate change, issues that are important to him and have been sources of much speculation since he announced they would be the subject of an encyclical—reserved for a pope’s most important teachings—later this year. Then again, he did not really need to mention them.

After all, his trip to the city had been moved up and shortened because of an approaching storm, and the Mass was held in a drenching downpour with high winds. Like everyone else there that day, the pope wore a poncho.

“The environment was front and center,” said Henry Schwalbenberg, PhD, director of Fordham’s master’s degree program in international political economy and development (IPED), who was there with some of his students. “He was trying to help people deal with the suffering in their lives that was caused by an environmental event—in the middle of a tropical storm.

“The organizers offered him the choice of saying Mass in a tent, but he refused the indoor option. I think the rain and the storm were right on for what he wanted.”

Slapping Nature in the Face

Weather is not the same thing as climate. Single weather events such as Typhoon Haiyan or Hurricane Sandy, which wreaked havoc on the U.S. East Coast in 2012, cannot definitively be attributed to climate change. But scientists who study climate patterns over longer periods of time predict that extreme weather will increase in the future as a consequence of the rising levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere. Climate-change skeptics still dispute that, but atmospheric greenhouse gases are undoubtedly rising. And the pope has made it clear who he thinks is responsible for the increase.

“Mostly, in great part, it is man who has slapped nature in the face,” he said in a press conference during his flight to the Philippines. “We have in a sense taken over nature.”

It is perhaps not surprising that the man who took the name Francis when he was elected pope—after Francis of Assisi, patron saint of the environment—would make environmental issues a priority of his papacy.

“He’s changed the tone of the conversation within the church and gotten the attention of people who might not have paid attention to this issue,” said Paolo Galizzi, a clinical professor at Fordham Law School who specializes in international environmental law and human rights.

But what in the pope’s background and training accounts for this dedication? And what can be expected when his encyclical is issued, probably in the early summer?

One place to look for the source of the pope’s dedication to environmental issues is in his training as a Jesuit, according to Chris Lowney, FCRH ’81, GSAS ’81, author of Pope Francis: Why He Leads the Way He Leads (Loyola Press, 2013). Lowney notes that one of the spiritual exercises that originated with Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order, is to “find God in all things.”

“I can easily see how the pope’s Jesuit formation reinforces the idea that we are stewards of God’s creation and that God is somehow present in all of creation,” said Lowney, a former Jesuit seminarian and investment banker who now chairs the board of Catholic Health Initiatives. “So, therefore, we have a duty to look after it responsibly.”

Christiana Peppard, PhD, assistant professor of theology, science, and ethics at Fordham, agrees that Francis’ devotion to nature has a theological basis, but it also has an ethical component based on who’s responsible for environmental problems—and who suffers most from the impact of those problems.

“Climate change, which is driven predominantly by highly developed states like the U.S., tends to disproportionately affect the poor,” said Peppard, author of Just Water: Theology, Ethics, and the Global Water Crisis (Orbis Books, 2014). “And they didn’t cause the problem in the first place.”

The Inequality of Climate Change

Although in recent years China has become the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide, the bulk of the greenhouse gases that have accumulated in the atmosphere were the product of the industrialized nations of Europe and, especially, America. Yet many of the countries that will be hit hardest by the effects of climate change are developing nations where large swaths of the population live in poorly built housing and the infrastructure to resist or respond to disasters is rudimentary at best.

“If you are living on a dollar a day or less, it’s very difficult to deal with everyday realities such as feeding your family, let alone things like flooding that’s caused by climate change,” said Galizzi.

Josh Kyller sees this challenge play out daily in his work as the emergency coordinator for Catholic Relief Services on the Philippine islands of Leyte and Samar, where he oversees a staff of about 300 people working to help residents rebuild their lives. He recites the grim statistics of Haiyan’s destructive power in the area: Thousands perished, and 10 million people were displaced.

The outpouring of international relief and Filipinos’ eagerness to rebuild has led to significant progress in the recovery, but Kyller and his staff are still helping 100,000 households in efforts to rebuild homes, provide clean water and proper sewage, and reduce exposure to future disasters.

“Tacloban is a kind of boom town,” said Kyller, a 2011 graduate of Fordham’s IPED program, who was with Schwalbenberg and his students at the pope’s Mass in January. “But there’s still a long road ahead.”

Concern for the poor and vulnerable has been a constant theme in Pope Francis’ life. But his positions are not that different from those of his immediate papal predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, who wrote extensively about poverty and economic justice, according to Peppard, although Americans may not associate them as strongly with such issues because of the U.S. church’s focus on the pontiffs’ positions on reproduction and other social issues.

“Pope Francis’ teachings are not new. They’re being articulated anew by him,” she said. “But no one has written an encyclical focused on the environment. That is new.”

Schwalbenberg said that the pope is likely to link environmental degradation and economic justice in a way his predecessors did not. “I think Francis’ emphasis will be to wed the environment very tightly to a preferential treatment for the poor.”

As for the expertise that will underpin the encyclical, Francis is likely to draw on the information presented at a four-day workshop on sustainability issues that was held at the Vatican last May and brought together several dozen scientists, theologians, philosophers, and economists, including four Nobel laureates. He is expected to issue his encyclical in June or July because he wants to increase the odds that it will make an impact on the next round of international climate negotiations, which will take place in Paris in November.

The Pope’s Political Critics

Although the exact contents of the papal letter are not known, that has not stopped what Peppard calls preemptive criticism of the encyclical, prompted at least in part by the pope’s occasionally sharp remarks about what he has called “unfettered free-market capitalism.”

Last fall, for example, he addressed a global group of grassroots organizers, saying that an economic system centered only on money would “plunder nature” to sustain “frenetic” levels of consumption. “Climate change, the loss of biodiversity, deforestation are already showing their devastating effects … from which you, the humble, suffer the most.”

Taken as a whole, his critics say, Francis’ views amount to socialism at best, communism at worst. In their view, the free market, far from being the source of inequality, is the great engine that will pull the world’s poor out of misery.

“Pope Francis—and I say this as a Catholic—is a complete disaster when it comes to his public policy pronouncements,” Stephen Moore, chief economist of the Heritage Foundation, has written. “On the economy, and even more so on the environment, the pope has allied himself with the far left and has embraced an ideology that would make people poorer and less free.”

The encyclical and Francis’ addresses to the United Nations and U.S. Congress, both of which are set to take place in September, are unlikely to persuade conservative critics such as Moore or deeply entrenched climate-change skeptics such as Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who last February brandished a snowball in the Senate chamber to dramatize the cold winter in the nation’s capital, decrying what he called the “hysteria” about global warming.

“If the overwhelming science hasn’t been able to persuade you, I am not sure what else can happen to convince you that climate is a problem,” said Galizzi. “Having said that, the encyclical has the potential to reach people who don’t pay attention to these issues.”

Schwalbenberg agrees. He cites the example of a Connecticut businessman he knows, whom he describes as “a very devout Catholic” who’s not interested in the environment. “But because the pope is talking about it, he’s going to think about it.”

An Expansive View of Life

Theologically, the encyclical could also be a way to redefine what constitutes a “life” issue for the Catholic Church.

“It will be an opportunity to see that there’s more at stake in Catholic ethics in the 21st century than reproduction, abortion, and euthanasia,” Peppard said. “If the church is concerned about life, that need not be a selective lens.”

But what about results, such as a firm commitment by the nations of the world to reduce greenhouse emissions when they meet in Paris?

Given the complexities of getting so many countries, with their varying national interests, to agree on anything, the odds may not be in Francis’ favor. On the other hand, he is a singular figure, the leader of a worldwide institution with 1.2 billion members but no national interests to defend, no reelection campaign to wage.

“He has won great credibility by his example of humility and his reputation as a truth-teller who speaks plainly. So few politicians nowadays can speak with that same credibility,” said Lowney. “He would seem as well-positioned as anyone to win a hearing for the issue of how we steward the Earth.”

—Stevenson Swanson is a freelance journalist who has written about religion, the United Nations, and the environment, among other topics.

Sarah Weber, GSAS ’05, received the 2015 Swanstrom-Baerwald Award for Excellence during a special ceremony held at in Rose Hill’s Keating Hall. The biennial award—of which Weber is only the fourth recipient—recognizes members of the Fordham community who demonstrate stellar commitment to the service of faith and the promotion of international peace and justice.

Weber, a graduate of Fordham’s International Political Economy and Development (IPED) program, was honored for her work at Catholic Relief Services (CRS) in support of the Global Fund for AIDS, TB, and malaria. Her work to secure three grants totaling more than $65 million has helped to distribute 450 million insecticide-treated mosquito nets in Africa to protect families against malaria.

Her service with the Global Fund is just the most recent instance of her international development career, which spans close to 20 years. She received a Fulbright Fellowship to Botswana after graduating from Sarah Lawrence College in 1997; served with the Peace Corps in Côte d’Ivoire; conducted a microfinance internship in Mali while in the IPED program; and has worked with CRS in Ghana, in post-conflict Liberia, and in Benin.

“You have to be an optimist if you want to stay in the field of international development for the long haul,” Weber told an audience of dignitaries, students, peers, and her former teachers.

She said one of the challenges of humanitarian work is “investing everything you have” into a project with no way of knowing whether you’ll get the results you’d hoped for.

“You want to do the right thing, and the people you’re working with want to do the right thing,” she said. “But when it comes to actually making that thing happen, you don’t always know if it’s going to work.”

Weber works at CRS’ headquarters in Baltimore, providing technical support to CRS country teams around the world that are furthering public health.

Joining the ceremony were: Joseph M. McShane, SJ, president of Fordham; Archbishop Bernadito Auza, the Apostolic Nuncio and permanent observer of the Holy See to the United Nations; Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, the Archbishop of New York; and Michelle Broemmelsiek, executive vice president of CRS for overseas operations.

At a dinner following the award ceremony the Father John F. Hurley, SJ Commendation was presented to Irene Baldwin, FCRH ’83, for her work in support of CRS. Also recognized were two travel fellows—Elvin Rivera and James Sheridan, both of St. Joseph’s Seminary of the Archdiocese of New York.

The Swanstrom-Baerwald Award honors the memory of Friedrich Baerwald, PhD, former professor of economics, and Bishop Edward E. Swanstrom, FCRH ’24, GSAS ’38, a student of Baerwald’s and the founder of CRS.

Joseph Kelly, GSAS ’04, hoisted the The Swanstrom-Baerwald Award on March 6 before an audience of students, faculty, and staff from the International Political Economy and Development (IPED) program, representatives from Catholic Relief Services (CRS), distinguished clergy, and his family.

“Mom and Dad, please know that I know that I am accepting this award because of you,” he addressed his parents, who sat in the front row of Keating First auditorium.

The biennial award recognizes members of the Fordham community for their commitment to the service of faith and the promotion of justice, said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham. It is named in memory of Friedrich Baerwald, Ph.D., former Fordham professor of economics, and Bishop Edward E. Swanstrom, founder of CRS.

Father McShane, Bishop Clark, and Bishop Hubbard. Photo by Chris Taggart

“It is more than appropriate that Joe Kelly be recognized with Bishop Hubbard and Bishop Clark,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham. “Like Joe, they are deserving of high honors, and like Joe, they have served the church, and humanity, with great energy and grace. Indeed, Fordham is honored by their presence and by the opportunity to recognize their work.”

Kelly, a graduate of the IPED program, accepted the award from the Most Rev. Howard J. Hubbard, bishop of Albany. Bishop Hubbard, along with Bishop Matthew H. Clark of Rochester, were honored as the 2013 recipients of the President’s Medal at a separate ceremony later that evening.

For the past eight years, Kelly has worked with CRS in far-flung locales that ranged from Afghanistan to Haiti. He will take up a post as head of their Syrian office this April.

The honoree, who was expecting to be lauded at a “small discussion,” said he was slightly taken aback by the turnout and promotion of the event, which attracted more than 200 attendees.

“Every five feet along Keating Commons I came in contact with a poster of my face, a hundred Joseph Kellys staring out at me,” he joked. “It seemed like some campaign . . . like, ‘Have you seen this aid worker? Missing. He was in Afghanistan, Bolivia, Haiti, Brazil.'”

At a more intimate dinner that followed, it was Kelly’s turn to listen to the other night’s honorees—Bishops Hubbard and Clark.

“They were so inspiring and hopeful,” said Kelly. “It’s been a long while since I’ve heard words of wisdom and vision that profound.”

Father McShane places the President’s Medal on Bishop Clark. Photo by Chris Taggart

You can view the ceremony on video here.

Centuries after St. Ignatius bid his followers to “Go forth and set the world on fire,” Fordham students are heeding the call. Within a month, four recent graduates will scatter across the globe to serve the world’s poorest communities.

Erin Atwell, Emily Groene, Emily MacGruder—all GSAS ’12—and Joseph Witiw, GSAS ’11, will journey to Africa and the Middle East as International Development Fellows with Catholic Relief Services (CRS).

“Catholic Relief Services is the face of the American Catholic community to the poor of the world, and since the ending of World War II, Fordham has played a significant role in preparing our students for professional careers with CRS,” said Henry Schwalbenberg, Ph.D., director of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences’ (GSAS) International Political Economy and Development program (IPED), from which the students graduated.

For Groene, the upcoming year in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the third phase of her goal to work in humanitarian aid services and policy—a goal that formed after spending two years in Bulgaria with the Peace Corps and six months in Burkina Faso as a CRS intern.

“The six-month internship in West Africa confirmed my aspirations to work for CRS, and I learned a lot from my colleagues,” said the Onalaska, Wis., native. “At this point, I feel that I am well-equipped to face the challenges of working in international development and relief and I am eager to experience the everyday rewards.”

As a fellow, Groene, who speaks French fluently, will research the CRS field operations in the Congo and collaborate with other CRS workers to develop additional programs and events. She will be stationed at the Central African regional headquarters in Kinshasa.

“I realized that I enjoy learning about new languages and cultures, and I’ve been exposed to some of the challenges of developing countries,” Groene said. “Part of the attraction that CRS has for me is that the organization will allow me to see new parts of the world while serving the most in need.”

MacGruder’s enthusiasm for her approaching fellowship in Dakar, Senegal comes from years of serving abroad. As a Peace Corps volunteer, she worked with unemployed youth in the South Pacific island of Tonga. Later, as a CRS intern, she served in Sierra Leone, where much of the population still struggles in the aftermath of civil war.

“I don’t have any trepidation about what I’ll see in Senegal after having worked in Sierra Leone,” said MacGruder, of Atkinson, Ill. “I loved my experiences working there [and Tonga], and this certainly led me to want to work with an organization like CRS, which works directly on the ground level with beneficiaries.”

Like Groene, MacGruder said that her time with CRS in Senegal is just the beginning of lifelong work in humanitarian aid.

“I don’t plan to ‘get back,’” she said, considering whether she will return to the United States following her year in Africa. “After the experience in Senegal, I hope to take a position in another country, likely in Sub-Saharan Africa, with CRS. This is hopefully the start of a career with this organization.”

Atwell and Witiw are no strangers to international humanitarian work, either. Atwell, who served in the Peace Corps, worked in Rwanda during her CRS internship and now will journey to Burundi for her fellowship.

Witiw, a former member of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, interned with CRS in Sierra Leone and will complete his fellowship in Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank.

“Our graduates have gone on to perform this international humanitarian work of the church with the highest levels of compassion, commitment, and competence—and often in the most difficult parts of the world,” Schwalbenberg said.

“In continuing this special tradition, our four most recent International Development Fellows reaffirm Fordham’s core identity and mission as a Jesuit university.”

New York City’s newly installed prelate, Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan, made his first appearance at Fordham on April 22, at the keynote address of a conference celebrating the University’s partnership with Catholic Relief Services.

“Working Toward Global Justice” linked Fordham alumni who work with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) in impoverished nations with students who are interested in joining relief agencies or interning with CRS. The partnership is in its 10th year.

Archbishop Dolan, who chairs the CRS board of directors, said making his first visit to Fordham during an event promoting the international relief group was nothing less than providential.

“I may have conflicting obligations, but I do not have conflicting loves, and two of them are very obvious this evening: the church’s dedication to faith and reason, so beautifully exemplified by Father McShane here at Fordham, and the church’s dedication to charity, that is so magnificently illustrated through the work of Catholic Relief Services,” he said.

“For this great University to host Catholic Relief Services proves that the church has both a head and a heart, and it’s a great evening, and I’m honored to be a part of it.”

In his keynote address, “Faith, Justice and Solidarity in the 21st Century,” Michael Wiest (FCRH ’67), executive vice president of CRS, detailed the group’s history. He charted its growth from helping European refugees in the aftermath of World War II to its current incarnation, which was completely overhauled after the Rwandan genocide in 1994.

The disintegration of former communist states like Yugoslavia made work difficult for CRS, but nothing had prepared it for the fallout of the Rwanda killings. At least 500,000 people were killed over 100 days.

“Rwanda was one of those countries that was a premier country for Catholic Relief Services. We knew that these hatreds existed between the Tutsi and the Hutu community, but we called that politics. That’s not what we were about. We were about social-economic development,” he said.

After the crying, drinking and praying that ensued among staff members, CRS leadership came together to reflect on the future of the group. What they decided was that CRS had lost the fullness of its Catholic identity.

“We were so focused on the United States government as the source of our resources that we came to see ourselves as a mini USAID,” Wiest said. “We failed to see ourselves as a church. The teachings of the church did not permeate the work of CRS in Africa.”

The solution, he explained, was to refocus the agency’s priority toward justice, and to articulate it in such a way that even a Muslim driver in Morocco would feel he was a better Muslim by virtue of the fact that he was working for a Catholic organization.

“We came to believe that man, by virtue of the fact that he was created in the image and likeness of God, is sacred, and that we achieve the fullness of our humanity in relationships with each other,” he said.

Wiest was followed by Archbishop Celestino Migliore, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, who complimented Wiest and CRS for recognizing that turning legality and human rights into justice takes a clear ethical component.

The event was sponsored by Fordham’s graduate program in International Political Economy and Development.

Bridget Bucardo Rivera, who will receive her master’s degree in August, has been named an International Development Fellow by Catholic Relief Services, and will be assigned to Nicaragua in the fall. Through an IPED International Peace and Development Travel Fellowship, Rivera is currently working in El Salvador with Catholic Relief Services on a four-country initiative that assists 7,100 small holder coffee producers in Central American and Mexico.

John Briggs, also an August graduate, has been named an International Development Fellow by Catholic Relief Services, and in the fall will be assigned to Uganda. He is currently working in Honduras with Catholic Relief Services on a project that will offer at-risk and gang-involved youth with options for meaningful and sustainable livelihoods through vocational training. Briggs is also an IPED International Peace and Development Travel Fellowship recipient.

Catholic Relief services uses their International Development Fellows Program to recruit the best and brightest from among the graduates of the leading graduate programs in international development, according to Schwalbenberg, who says out of a thousand applications, only about 20 are chosen. The majority of the applicants come from large elite schools such as Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of International Affairs, the Fletcher School of Diplomacy and International Law and John Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies. Given the small size of the IPED program, Schwalbenberg said he is very pleased to account for about 10 percent of all successful applicants.

Chengguang Zhao, although not officially selected as an International Fellow, has been offered a contract to continue his work with Catholic Relief Services in Sierra Leone. Through an IPED International Peace and Development Travel Fellowship, Zhao has helped to implement a U.S. Department of Agriculture school feeding program. Zhao, also an August graduate, is currently involved with coordinating a grant proposal to USAID to help address Sierra Leone’s extremely high child mortality rate: roughly 20 percent of all children in that country die before the age of 5.