Irwan Etendi’s family had never experienced anything like the earthquake that hit West Sumatra, Indonesia, on September 30.

“We were all inside when we felt the shaking,” he says. “We all ran out—even my father-in-law who hadn’t finished his [daily] prayers.”

The…

In little more than one week, a series of horrific natural disasters has carved a swath of destruction from the tiny island of Samoa west to a massive section of southern India. The storms, earthquakes and monsoon rains have killed…

By Debbie DeVoe

The year 2006 wasn’t such a good one for Mary Waithira Kariuki. First, the 47-year-old Kenyan came down with pneumonia in July. During her two-week hospital stay, the doctors also tested her for tuberculosis and for HIV. Both…

Life-saving food aid destined for Catholic Relief Services (CRS) programs in Rwanda is among the cargo of the Maersk Alabama, the ship hijacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia.

Forty-nine containers aboard the ship hold 860 metric tons of bulgur…

CRS donated several drilling rigs to the Ethiopian Catholic Church to tap deep groundwater. Our partner, the Hararghe Catholic Secretariat, used one of the rigs to drill a borehole in Dire Dawa, an arid eastern district in Ethiopia. The borehole…

Catholic Relief Services (CRS) will mark World Water Day on March 22 by recognizing the importance of making clean water available to the nearly 1 billion people around the world who don’t have access to enough safe freshwater to meet…

I visited Zimbabwe a week before the swearing-in of the opposition leader as prime minister by his erstwhile enemy President Mugabe, which initiated the Unity Government. While there, I traveled to see Catholic Relief Services’ programs and express the solidarity…

Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) [on Monday] launched the much-anticipated Catholics Confront Global Poverty initiative.  Introduced at the annual Catholic Social Ministry Gathering on Capitol Hill, the two-year nationwide effort calls upon…

Every year, millions of Catholics participate in Operation Rice Bowl (ORB), Catholic Relief Services’ annual Lenten program that starts Ash Wednesday (Feb. 25, 2009). Each Lent, Catholic parishes and schools from more than 13,000 communities use symbolic rice bowls as…

- Catholic Relief Services (CRS), the international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States, is calling on US Catholics to join its mission to build peace by fighting poverty in 2009. A renewed effort to confront global…