​GHR Foundation supports the global Catholic Church to work in ways that promote equity, dignity, and care worldwide, in bold pursuit of Pope Francis’ call to pave the way for the most vulnerable to survive, thrive and drive systems change. The Foundation has worked in the care and child protection space for more than a decade and believes safeguarding is critical to a healthy global Church. We see enduring value in the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors’ work, and are privileged to partner with them as they continue making strides to support, improve, and accelerate safeguarding capacity and standards locally and globally in the Church.

From The Pillar:

“In an April 2022 address, Pope Francis asked the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors to ‘prepare for me a report on the Church’s initiatives for the protection of minors and vulnerable adults’ on an annual basis.

In September 2022, Pope Francis appointed new members to the Vatican child protection commission. They included Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, a Dutch jurist with expertise on child rights and child safeguarding. De Boer-Buquicchio, the chair of the pontifical commission’s annual report committee, discussed the creation of the first annual report in an email interview with The Pillar.”
​
Read the full article here.

Members of GHR’s Board, executive leadership and program team traveled to Rome to meet with Vatican partners and learn about opportunities to expand and deepen partnerships within the Global domain.

As the Church pursues a path of renewal, several key Curial offices are taking steps in the same direction. GHR is supporting these efforts in various ways, building capacity to effectively execute Pope Francis’s vision. The Foundation’s work is largely focused on supporting the Vatican in retooling and building quality relationships with local Church and secular organizations. In practice, this looks like research and analysis to understand the needs and potential solutions for professionalizing staff, managing resources, listening and responding to local needs, and working collaboratively across dicasteries. 

On this trip, the GHR team met with several Vatican leaders , each holding a vision of what success looks like in terms of Curial reform. They offered insights into their day-to-day work, sharing examples of the challenges and opportunities they have encountered in advancing internal change and external service. In addition to building shared understanding, the discussions were also a chance for GHR’s Board and Staff to offer encouragement and convey the foundation’s ongoing commitment and support.

Sr. Alessandra Smerilli, Secretary of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, shared, “Flexibility is the most important characteristic of our work with GHR. You give us space to make mistakes, the ability to learn, to train, to change. Often with donors you have to show the good and not the weaknesses.  What’s best with GHR is that we can share weakness and get help.”
​

GHR works closely with the Catholic Church and our partners answering an urgent call to action from Pope Francis, to transform global development from a system of extraction to one of inclusion—paving the way for the most vulnerable to survive, thrive and drive systems change. Learn more about our work supporting the global Church here. 

From Leadership Roundtable:

"Welcome to the Catholic Leaders Podcast! In this episode, our Executive Partners Kim Smolik and Kerry Robinson sit down with Amy Goldman, CEO and Chair of GHR Foundation. Kim, Kerry, and Amy talk about philanthropic work, Pope Francis’ leadership, and the power of working together as a co-responsible Church.​"

Listen here. 

GHR Foundation has worked in the care and child protection space for more than a decade and believes safeguarding is critical to a healthy global Catholic Church. The care and protection of children is a key area of impact for the foundation and we commit time, effort and resources both within the Church and the broader care sector.

GHR is humbled to support Pope Francis’s vision of the Church as a safe and trustworthy place of healing and service, not only in our desire to support those harmed by abuse but also to improve the Church’s ability to better serve the millions they work with daily in all areas of social service.
In early 2023 we began providing field resources to support safeguarding standards and annual reporting across four global regions in partnership with the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors. These resources will enable data collection and capacity building, ultimately to bring about transparency, accountability and process improvement. For GHR, this work fits into a broader effort to advance care for the most vulnerable, including support of the International Union of Superiors General (UISG), Catholic Care for Children International (CCCI), The Association of Member Episcopal Conference of Eastern Africa (AMECEA), Foundations and Donors Interested in Catholic Activities (FADICA), and others. 

In early May, Pope Francis met with the Safeguarding Commission members and staff, and he encouraged them to continue with their efforts to improve guidelines and standards for the conduct of those in service to the Church to safeguard against sexual abuse.
​
More recently, the Commission launched a global consultation on updated guidelines to prevent sexual abuse in the Church, aiming to serve as “a model to define safeguarding standards to be implemented in every local church across the world.” Through surveys, a capacity-building program, new systems for receiving and managing accusations of abuse and data collection for the production of an Annual Report, the Commission aims to “promote protection from abuse in the Church according to existing good practices in safeguarding.”

GHR is committed to the protection of young people and all vulnerable people, working closely with the Catholic Church and an array of other partners to advance safeguarding policies and activities. Learn more about our work supporting the global Church here.

From ACIA Africa:

​"Jesuits Refugee Service (JRS), an international refugee entity of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), has set up 'an outreach point' at Renk in South Sudan’s Upper Nile State where thousands of persons fleeing the Sudan war that broke out on April 15 are being served.

In a Monday, May 22 interview with ACI Africa, Fr. Francis Njuguna highlighted the services that JRS is facilitating at Renk in the Northeastern part of South Sudan, one of the entry points for those fleeing violence in Sudan’s capital city, Khartoum.

'We have stationed an outreach point in Renk in which we are able to offer services from the Maban base such as psychological, first aid, physiotherapy services, and counseling,' Fr. Njuguna said.

The Jesuit Priest added that 'all the services being offered there are basic and pretty much on a case-to-case basis, providing only temporary relief.'"

Read more. 

From May 16-18, 2023, UISG Catholic Care for Children International and GHR convened episcopal leaders, government representatives and Catholic sisters from east Africa in Nairobi, Kenya. Highlights from the convening from Global Sisters Report:

"Catholic Care for Children International's mission is to support institutes of consecrated life ministering on child care to read the signs of the times, reduce the need for care in institutions, prevent family separation, and provide alternatives to enable children to grow up in a safe and loving family environment.

Religious sisters in four African nations — Uganda, Malawi, Zambia and Kenya — have been at the forefront of this effort.

Sr. Niluka Perera, the coordinator of Catholic Care for Children International, said the gathering has brought together episcopal leaders, government representatives, Catholic sisters, advocacy groups and policymakers from East Africa to "reflect upon and discern the Catholic Church's growing commitment to ensure all children are safe."

'We have converged here as stakeholders because we realized that the work of taking care of children is the responsibility of everyone,' Perera told Global Sisters Report in an interview at Boma Hotel in Nairobi. 'All the children belong to God. Therefore, everyone from parents, relatives, society, the church and the government is responsible for caring for them. Once children are born, they become our responsibility to bring them up in a loving environment.'

Perera, a member of the Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, applauded the efforts by the sisters from the East African region for the past few years since the Catholic Care for Children initiative launched in the region and urged other stakeholders to join the sisters and ensure every child grows up in a nurturing family environment. A Sri Lankan nun who is also a social worker, Perera said the initiative had decided to change the strategy and involve other stakeholders, including government representatives, civil society organizations, the community and parents, to ensure more children are placed in families instead of institutions.

'CCCI realized that the sisters were working alone and decided to bring other stakeholders so that sisters could share with them their ideas, experiences and challenges of bringing up children in a safe environment," said Perera, who was appointed by Pope Francis to the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors in September 2022. "We also wanted to bring together sisters from various congregations and countries under one roof to exchange ideas and improve their pursuit of bringing up children in a loving environment.'

Kathleen Mahoney, a program officer of GHR Foundation, applauded the sisters from the four African countries for reintegrating nearly 4,000 children since 2019 from more than 70 charitable institutions. GHR provides funding in the four African countries for the training of sisters in social work, case management and child care programs and assisting in the transition from institutional to family care. (GHR Foundation and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation also fund Global Sisters Report.)"

Read more. 

From the Association for Catholic Information in Africa: 

"The moral requirement to safeguard children is not new, the Secretary of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors has said. In his Tuesday, May 16 address at the convention of stakeholders of the Catholic Care for Children International (CCCI) in the region of the Association of Member Episcopal Conferences of Eastern Africa (AMECEA) in Nairobi, Fr. Andrew Small also cautioned against the tendency to point fingers at others as perpetrators of child abuse.

'It was always wrong to abuse children; this is not a new moral requirement,' Fr. Small said. 

He added, 'The Ministry of Service, Ministry of Safeguarding is a core mission to respect and protect the dignity of human persons and proclaim the truth of God's love for us.'"

Read more.

From Association for Catholic Information in Africa: 

"'The Church is called upon to ensure all children are well taken care of and are exploiting their full potential,' Archbishop Kivuva said during the CCCI event that has been realized by the collaboration of the Association of Religious Sisters in Kenya (AOSK), Gerald and Henrietta Rauenhorst (GHR)  Foundation, and AMECEA.'"

Read more. 

From The National Catholic Reporter: 

"Pope Francis has brought a fresh perspective to established Catholic teaching, panelists said March 13 at an event hosted by Georgetown University's Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life to mark the pontiff's 10th anniversary.

Francis, formerly Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, was elected the Catholic Church’s 266th pope March 13, 2013, after Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation. During his pontificate, Francis has emphasized themes such as caring for people and creation, an approach some liken to a 'seamless garment.'"

Read more.

From L to R: Yende Anderson, Pa Lor, Tarra McNally

As we strive to deepen the impact of Global programs, and build capacity to best to support our partners, we are thrilled to welcome some exceptional talent to the newly expanded GHR Global team.

Yende Anderson, Program Officer, joins us from the Minnesota Department of Health. She has a background in state and national policy, stakeholder engagement, program design and implementation, aimed at integrating immigrant international medical graduates into Minnesota’s healthcare delivery system and other strategies to increase access to primary care. She has also designed health programming for women in West Africa and her home country of Liberia. 

Pa Lor, Program Associate, joins us from Habitat for Humanity, where she oversaw operations for the Homeowner Development Team. She has a background in administration, planning, data management, and client service. Pa will operate as the central coordinator and grants administrator for the GHR Global team.

Tarra McNally, Program Officer, joins us from the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture. She has a background in research and community-centered program design and evaluation with a focus on global public health and faith, and experience working in Catholic and international spaces. She was a member of the external team that evaluated GHR’s Inter-religious Action initiative.