Story - August 11, 2020 - By Judy Orr, Executive Director, Catholic Charities of Tennessee Fresh from new director training at Catholic Charities USA (CCUSA) headquarters in mid-February, I was reenergized to tackle my goals of elevating the Catholic Charities of Tennessee’s profile and increasing fundraising. Three weeks in March 2020 accelerated all that. On March 3, at 12:38 a.m., a tornado…

Catholic Charities USA was founded more than a century ago by men and women who believed that the collective efforts of the church to faithfully serve people in need could change the course of poverty in our nation.

Guided by Catholic social teaching and informed by the experiences of local Catholic Charities agencies, CCUSA advocacy urges policymakers to recognize the needs of the most vulnerable and to adopt measures that support them.  

Catholic Charities agencies are among the nation’s largest providers of safe, decent, affordable housing. We believe that access to housing is a human right, one that upholds the dignity of all people.   

Story - May 9, 2023 - ORLANDO | James and Phyllis Masteller weathered many hurricanes in their more than 80 years of life, but none like Hurricane Ian. Living in Naples Land Yacht Harbor, close to a canal and just one mile from the coast, the couple planned to evacuate because of heavy winds set to slice right through the city.…

Story - February 11, 2022 - Since the advent of the Healthy Housing Initiative (HHI) in January 2020, a primary objective of the pilots has been to identify and engage local Catholic health system hospitals in partnership. The participation of these health systems in addressing the primary care and behavioral health needs of HHI clients is critical to meeting HHI’s goals…

Story - December 28, 2021 - Right up through December, extreme weather events and natural disasters of 2021 continued to upend local communities and set agendas for domestic and overseas emergency response efforts at major Catholic aid organizations. “We had about 85 disasters,” in the United States this past year, said Kim Burgo, vice president for disaster operations for Catholic Charities…

Story - August 6, 2021 - Affordable housing advocates at Catholic Charities agencies and elsewhere are working intently to help renters access billions of dollars in federal Emergency Rental Assistance funds to prevent a surge in evictions tied to the coronavirus pandemic. They are frustrated, however, they told Catholic News Service, because the $46.5 billion for rental assistance allocated since December…

Story - August 3, 2021 - Sister Joan Sullivan and Sister Mary Helen Beirne, both members of the Sisters of Saint Joseph, Philadelphia, spent a week (July 5-12, 2021) at the Catholic Charities of Laredo’s La Frontera respite care center serving immigrants who entered the United States via the border with Mexico. A journal of their reflections about their service follows.…

Story - June 2, 2021 - Prayers, the kind only a child can make, were on display on a table of pleas written by migrant children near a small statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe, as bishops from the U.S., Mexico and Central America gathered June 1 in Mundelein. The prelates came together for the first day of an emergency meeting…

Story - April 15, 2021 - Newspapers and TV news broadcasts are filled with stories about the situation at the Mexico-U.S. border and the record number of migrants coming to the United States. But Sister Donna Markham, OP, PhD, saw the situation first-hand April 8 when she visited Catholic Charities workers in El Centro, California, less than 20 miles from Mexicali,…

Story - March 31, 2021 - The eviction moratorium put in place by the Centers for Disease Control has been extended three months, until June 30. The order from Dr. Rochelle Walensky, CDC director, said the extension was necessary to prevent potentially millions of renter households from being forced from their homes in the coming weeks. The action was welcomed by…