CRS 75th Anniversary

Nikki Gamer: Hi everyone, this is Nikki Gamer for Catholic Relief Services. And welcome back to Behind the Story, a podcast series that invites you to celebrate the people behind 75 years of our history—the people we serve, our partners, our staff … and especially the supporters who make our work possible. In our last episode, we spoke to the Trujillo family of Atlanta about our work to help resettle thousands of Cuban refugees to the United States in the 1960s. Today, we’ll be talking to Nathalie and Dave Piraino, both former CRS staff, about a very difficult moment … April 1994 … when the Rwandan genocide shocked the world—and pierced the heart of CRS. In just 100 days, more than 800,000 people were massacred, including five CRS employees, and many, many family and friends. Nathalie, Dave, welcome. Thank you both so much for being with us and for reflecting on what I can imagine was a very painful time for both of you.

Dave Piraino: Oh you’re welcome. It’s a pleasure to be here, back at CRS.

Nathalie Piraino: Thank you for having us.

Nikki Gamer: I heard there were so many people who knew who you are … that you’ve been getting stopped, you know, every 5 minutes before even getting up here.

Dave Piraino: Well, we’ve got a chance to see some good friends, old friends that we haven’t seen for a while. So that’s a bonus here.

Nathalie Piraino: We are part of the family.

Nikki Gamer: Love that. Love that. All right, so we’re going to go back in time, the way-back time machine, and we want to know how the two of you met.

Dave Piraino: Well, I joined CRS in 1977, and so I ended up in Sierra Leone working on a pilot school project near the Liberian border. And about 18 months later I was contacted by headquarters asking if I wanted to go to Rwanda. I knew they had mountain gorillas, and I knew Rwanda was called the country of a thousand hills with perpetual spring. So I arrived in Rwanda on July 1, 1978.

Dave Piraino: I was met at the airport by an American, and she took me to a small Catholic guesthouse in Kigali. So I found my way down to the dining room around 6 o’clock and went in, and there was one person sitting in the dining room. Yes, believe it or not, it was Nathalie. And she was the very first Rwandan that I met in Rwanda. And I knew immediately she was pretty special. And we started the next few days helping each other. She helped me learn my high school French a little better, and I worked with her on her high school English. And before we knew it, 6 months later we were married.

Nikki Gamer: What about her struck you? You said you knew she was special right away.

Dave Piraino: She was so friendly, outgoing, caring. After a little while, some people came in. They all came over and hugged her. And whether it was the server or the cook, or whoever, it didn’t matter. She just was someone that loved people besides of course being beautiful.

Nikki Gamer: And Nathalie, what did you think about when you saw him for the first time?

Nathalie Piraino: Well, um,  he was cute back then.

Dave Piraino: Back then?!

Nathalie Piraino: So after we talked a little bit and I found out that he was Catholic. I knew I was in business because Dad was going to approve.

Nikki Gamer:  And what positions were you both holding at the time at CRS?

Dave Piraino: Well, I had arrived as the country representative in Rwanda at that time and had a typical job is to be overseeing and developing country programs and what our focus would be.

Nathalie Piraino: I worked for the government, the Ministry of Youth, as a social worker.

Dave Piraino: We stayed in Rwanda 3 years after I arrived, and we had two children. And from there we moved to Zaire.

Nikki Gamer: So Nathalie, I want you to take us there and describe Rwanda the way you remember it as a girl.

Nathalie Piraino: It was a fun place to live in, to be. The climate was perfect. My parents had 12 kids. So families tended to be bigger, which to me was a great thing because then it’s more cousins to play with. But as I was growing up, also, there were some bad things, because I grew up after the revolution, which took place in 1959. But being a child, having a family and friends was really the most important thing for me. Even though we were going through civil wars, I felt safe because of the family and the community and the Church. So, my childhood was the best time of my life.

Nathalie Piraino: After sixth grade you had to go through the process of passing a national exam, and because Rwanda had a quota between the main ethnic groups of Hutu and the Tutsis—I was Tutsi—only 10% of the Tutsis were allowed to go to school. And so I was among the blessed ones who went to high school. And high school, then you had to go away from home to a boarding school, Catholic boarding schools. And it was fun too. It was challenging because then I discovered discrimination. So to study under those conditions, thank God for prayers. It was very hard, stressful, fearful. But through prayer, the Holy Spirit shows you the way and you learn how to become friends with the enemies.

Nikki Gamer: Nathalie, how did your parents make their living?

Nathalie Piraino: During that time, even now, the majority of Rwandese were all farmers. The economy of Rwanda is based on tourism and agriculture … subsistence economy. So we helped when we were home, we helped with the chores at home and in the field. It was fun because when you help your parents—let’s say it’s the season to grow beans, or squash—then you see every step of it. And after the harvest, you feel proud. My parents were super, super sweet and generous. Because when I was younger, we lived in a refugee camp after the revolution. So we knew what hunger felt like.

Nathalie Piraino: So as we moved out of the refugee camp, and there were widows in our neighborhood whose husbands were killed during the revolution and during all the civil wars. So Dad, God bless him, no one asked him, but every harvest he had to have a portion to take to the widows in the area. And guess who carried that on our heads? Us. Ten kilo here, 25 kilo there. We did it because we had to obey, but we didn’t like it. “You’re taking our food away … we work hard for it!” But as I got older, I appreciate what my parents did. As a 10-year-old, you go take care of your little brothers and sisters who are 3 and 4. We never left each other. We worked together. We ate with each other. It was beautiful.

Nikki Gamer: Do you remember anything else you’d want to share about your mother?

Nathalie Piraino: Oh, my mom was goofy. My mom, God bless her. I don’t know where she got this sense of humor, but she was a very, very hardworking woman. But she was very, very funny. Because being so many at home, there will be times we were hungry, and you come back from school … Before you go to school, you do your chores, then you come back running to do more chores at home. But we would tell mom, before we go fetch water, can we please have a little bit to eat? Because she didn’t want to make us upset, she would throw in a joke. She would kind of hand you her hand, and said, “Here, have a bite.” It’s like, “Mom, seriously. I’m hungry.” So you knew you had to go do what she asks you to do. Just laughing and do it anyway. But then you come back. She gives you a lot of food, gives you compliments: “You’re a good kid,” and those kind of things. And so we worked for compliments too.

Nikki Gamer: All right, I want to talk about your faith. What did being Catholic mean to your family?

Nathalie Piraino: We prayed so much when we were growing up. We prayed before we went to school, we prayed the Rosary every night before we eat dinner. It was something we grew up with, so it was really part of us. So being Catholic was a good thing, and that’s what we knew. We lived our faith all the time. You know, if you mess up at school, your sibling will tell on you, and then, guess what happened? Confession. And we went a lot!

Nikki Gamer: Dave, when you hear your wife remember and talk so beautifully about her childhood, what comes up for you?

Dave Piraino: Well, I had the opportunity to really get to know her family because we lived there basically 3 years, and we spent a lot of time there. Family was the most important thing. Her father was this wonderful person who watched over everything. And her mother was a funny woman. I didn’t speak a word of Kinyarwanda, she didn’t speak a word of English, but somehow she got across to me when she was happy with me or a joke that she was telling.

Nikki Gamer: So getting back to the dynamics between the Tutsis and Hutus. How did that play out on a daily basis?

Dave Piraino: Well, I lived in Rwanda from ‘78 to ’81, and during that time it was really pretty peaceful. Hutus and Tutsis were friends, generally. And we were aware, of course, that there were tensions between Hutus and Tutsis. But when I hear the stories—and of course then the genocide happened—it’s just so hard to fathom. How people who really were so loving, so kind … Family was important. They intermarried. They were one. Their culture, their language, their holidays, their everything was one. How that could happen. And how scary that was as they went through it.

Nathalie Piraino: When there were so-called peace, we were one people. Now I remember back now after the civil war in 1973, they kicked all the Tutsi kids out of school. And I think that civil war lasted 3 months. I was away, hiding, far away from my parents’ place. And when we got back home, the president said on the radio, “Peace and unity.” Whatever they will say, people will listen …

Dave Piraino: … back then.

Nathalie Piraino: And how the president said this, there was peace—you play with your friends again, you know?

Nikki Gamer: So it wasn’t like, “Oh, my neighbor is a Hutu …

Nathalie Piraino: No, no …

Nikki Gamer:  … we’re not talking to them.”

Nathalie Piraino: We had our farming, our Church, our community. We felt comfortable, and until there will be a civil war. When there was civil war, you always felt fearful.

Nikki Gamer: So, Nathalie, this was going on during a period of civil war …. before the genocide … while you were at boarding school … is that right?

Nathalie Piraino: We all went away to boarding schools. So they had a campaign mainly at the boys’ schools, telling them that they need to kill every Tutsi student and kick them out. And in the middle of the night the principal comes and picks every one of us. We thought we were in trouble. So we went in the convent. She said, “I’m sorry, children, you have to leave.” I said, I just passed the national exam and now you’re going to kick me out before the end of the semester?” We said, “What did we do?” She said, “Well, there is something going on, and it’s out they’re after Tutsi children.” So we have to leave. And she said, “Make sure you don’t tell your friends.” But at that time we didn’t know anything. So we said, “So how are we going to get to the main town?” Because we were hoping they would drive us. They didn’t want to do that because they didn’t want to be implicated. So I knew a priest, Father Augustin, who was a friend of the family. So this person took us to his house. When we got there, God bless them, they give us food and milk, and we said, “Can we stay here?” Because we didn’t know what was going on.

Nikki Gamer: Yeah, that’s terrifying.

Nathalie Piraino: And she said, we are known in the area. If you stay here, they will kill you with us. And the family is the one who told us what was going on. So they advise us go to the commercial center. Don’t say anything. It was very bad. We walked very long distances, and Rwanda is very mountainous. So these two guys said, “What’s wrong? What’s going on?” We said, “Well, they just kick us out of school.” So they turn around with us. So we followed them. So we walked 2 days, 1 night. And one of these guys was Hutu, but they were nice to us. Thanks to God we have them because at night we were afraid. Guess what? The next morning, noise going around, burning houses. It’s like, oh my God, I had no clue where we were going because we were in the hills where we’ve never been before.

Nikki Gamer: Sure.

Nathalie Piraino: So we walked another day up and down, and then we run into other students.

We ended up, we were like 13 girls and these two guys. The killers start running toward us. And those guys said, “We cannot stay with you. If we stay with you they will kill us.” We were close to a parish, the grass was tall. So we went, kind of hid in the grass, and those guys walked on top of us. They didn’t even feel us. But the type of fear you have at that time, it’s like you are numb. It’s like your brain goes to sleep even though your eyes are open.

Nathalie Piraino: We heard somebody whistling. Uh-oh, they found us. It was a Hutu priest. God bless you. They killed him in the genocide. Anyway, he said, “Other kids are at the parish.” “Where is the parish?” So he said, “It’s like 10 minutes from here.” He said, “But I cannot take you with me.” We said “Please, please.” We begged. He said, “No, if I take you, they kill you.”

He showed us how to go down the hill. Then he said, “Go down, turn left.” Oh my God …

Nikki Gamer: What did Nathalie and her classmates find at the bottom of that hill? Refuge? Or something else? Join us next month as Nathalie tells us how the situation in Rwanda went from bad to worse … and how this catastrophe changed CRS forever. Until then, check us out online at 75.crs.org. And don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast. Thank you.

Nikki Gamer: Hi everyone, this is Nikki Gamer for Catholic Relief Services. And welcome back to Behind the Story, a podcast series that invites you to celebrate the people behind 75 years of our history—the people we serve, our partners, our staff … and especially the supporters, like you, who make our work possible. In our last episode we spoke to Donal Reilly, our director for humanitarian response, about how we’ve become a leader in emergency response. But today, we’ll be talking about a little-known piece of our history—one that helped more than 100,000 people right here in the U.S.

Nikki Gamer: We’ll be talking about the 1960s, when CRS worked with other Catholic agencies, and churches across the United States, to welcome and support Cuban refugees. From our office in Miami’s Freedom Tower, CRS registered more than 124,000 Cuban refugees and resettled more than 57,000 between 1961 and 1965. Thousands of them were unaccompanied children. This was our last refugee resettlement project in the United States. We’ll be talking to the Trujillo family about their experiences … Michael Trujillo, a relationship manager in our Church Engagement department, and his parents, Annie and Raul Trujillo of Atlanta, who were both helped by CRS in the early 60s.

Nikki Gamer: Annie, Raul, Michael Trujillo, welcome to Behind the Story. We are so glad to have you.

Raul Trujillo: Oh, thank you for having us.

Nikki Gamer: All right, so I’ve noticed you have a very playful dynamic. And so I wanted to just start with Michael. Tell us about your parents.

Michael Trujilo: Yes, my parents have been together for more than 50 years, but I think what’s awesome about them is they can be serious when they need to, but also be fun when they need to. So sometimes I’ll come up here to watch the Latin awards shows, and my mom and I will dance, but then we can also be serious, and then we can go and celebrate God at Mass or different cultural celebrations.

Nikki Gamer: Wow. Okay. Fifty-four years of marriage, Raul and Annie. Raul, how does a relationship last for so long?

Annie Trujillo: A miracle.

Raul Trujillo: I give her a medal for patience and understanding, but I mean, it’s been great.

Nikki Gamer: I see you shaking your head, Annie. What’s your take?  How have you lasted?

Annie Trujillo: Well, I think you had to learn how to listen more than talk, have to remember only the things really made you get together and pray a lot.

Nikki Gamer: Yeah, faith plays an important part of your family. Does anybody want to talk about that?

Michael Trujillo: My Dad is the official prayer person anytime we get together as a family.

Nikki Gamer: All right, Dad, you’re up.

Raul Trujillo: I think the faith has been ingrained in our lives from when we were kids. We both went to Catholic schools.

Raul Trujillo: When we came to United States, I think we saw the fact that the Church in Atlanta was really kind of a small community. We’re only three percent of the population of Atlanta, and we were involved in some of the activities, especially when the Cuban exiles came to Atlanta.

Nikki Gamer: Annie, do you have anything to add?

Annie Trujillo: I think what really kept us together, it was the same faith and practicing the same faith—we didn’t have to fight for that. That you have problems like everybody else, but faith put us in the same road to keep on going.

Nikki Gamer: All right, so Annie, I want to talk for a minute about your arrival to the United States. So tell us how old you were, and tell us what that journey was like for you. Were you alone, or were you with other family?

Annie Trujillo: When I first arrived in the United States, I was 18, and I went directly to Miami where family friends of my mom told me to come over, and, you know, we can be there tilI find something else. And then, you know, I was looking for jobs.

Nikki Gamer: Now, did you speak English?

Annie Trujillo: Very little. I could read and write, but it was the hardest thing for me.

Nikki Gamer: What were you feeling at the time when you first made that journey?

Annie Trujillo: I felt very lonesome. Even though I, you know, went to her house, and I know everybody, and there were a lot of people, but, you know, you can be lonesome among 100 people. But, at the same time, I knew then I will see my parents soon, and I think that kept me going.

Nikki Gamer: Because they were going to come after?

Annie Trujillo: Yeah. Hopefully. And I always have that hope, you know, in front of me. I say it, “they’re coming, they’re coming.”

Nikki Gamer: All right. So, so when you got to the U.S., when you arrived in Miami, how did you get resettled?

Annie Trujillo: Okay, the next day after I got to Miami, they told me I had to go to the refugee center, and the first thing they say, “What denomination are you?” And I told them Catholic, and they send me to Catholic Relief Services.

Nikki Gamer: That’s amazing. So, CRS helped you at this time, at this incredibly difficult time in your life. And now your son works for CRS. That’s just a crazy coincidence.

Annie Trujillo: And that’s the way I found out. Then that was the agency who helped me, because Michael saw a letter they sent me to give me the waiver to be sent to my parents. And Michael said, look, “This is the same company I work for!”

Nikki Gamer: Wow. So Raul, now tell us about your journey here into the U.S.

Raul Trujillo: In my case, it was my uncle who was already left Cuba with his family. That time in Cuba, I was working, also studying architecture at the University of Havana. In order to leave Cuba, I had to quit both my work and my studies.

Raul Trujillo: So finally in September ’62, I left Cuba, arrive in Miami, there was my uncle waiting for me.

Raul Trujillo: I could not go to live in his house because his house was packed with people. So he gave me a little money—I think $2, $3 in a little envelope—and said that there’s some coins that you can call me if you need something because you might need to find … also, he tried to find me a room at a hotel, actually rented a bed at a hotel. I was 23 at the time.

Raul Trujillo: I learned that we can go to the refugee center, which was located at the Freedom Tower, downtown Miami. And I was interviewed. There were four agencies really helping the Cuban refugees. And one of them was Catholic. The other one was a Protestant, another Jewish. And then when they assigned me to the Catholic—because I was a Catholic.

Raul Trujillo: I was interviewed and later on, as Annie said, years later, I realized and I found out that these letters that they had next to the interview were C-R-S–that’s Catholic Relief Services. So here we are. Michael. Years later there was the guy who was really involved now with Catholic Relief Services.

Nikki Gamer: That’s an incredible story. So both of you were resettled by CRS and Michael now works for CRS. So what I hear in your stories is this idea that refugees, they have to leave everything behind, completely change their lives.

Raul Trujillo: Yeah, I think that’s important really too, because nobody really wants to leave their country and their families and friends and all that. Really, when I was in Cuba, I really never expected to be living in the United States.

Michael Trujillo: I think what’s amazing about the American community is that we’re a loving community. I think it’s amazing when I travel the Southeast, I see people opening their hearts and minds to migrants and refugees.

Michael Trujillo: All migrants and refugees want is to build a better life for themselves. All people here in the United States want to build a better life for themselves. So when they see that we are exactly the same, we should not let the place that you’re born determine the person that you are going to be.

Nikki Gamer: Michael, tell me about how your parents’ journey here to the U.S. has shaped your own life, because you were born here.

Michael Trujillo: I feel like I grew up in a bicultural community, so family being Cuban, but then my studies were all in English, and many of my friends were American, anywhere, African American, Asian American, Latin American.

Michael Trujillo: My parents have been able to thrive here in the United States. They’ve been able to be productive in this community, just like many of the other migrants, refugees that have arrived here in the United States. So I feel like their journey helped shape me. No one’s going to hand you something. You have to go look for a job, you have to go look and apply to different schools. So I think, you know, they fought for what they had and just kind of gives me that drive to continue fighting not only for me but to help others learn how to fight.

Nikki Gamer: Is that why you work for CRS now?

Michael Trujillo: Definitely. I work for CRS because it’s an organization that’s helping to fight for other people. And it’s helping people to get those skills and tools to better themselves.

Nikki Gamer: When you hear how, how deeply felt your mom is about being Cuban and Cuban-American, what comes up for you?

Michael Trujillo: I’ll start to cry sometimes, and she starts to cry. Going to a celebration we have each year … It’s Our Lady of Charity. It’s a Catholic celebration we have here. I see the Cubans come together to pray, but also see the Cubans come together to recognize the beauty of the Cuban culture. And I just see the Cuban community just smiling, laughing, eating some pastries together, singing songs together.

Michael Trujillo: And it’s just, it’s awesome. And I know that once this generation gets a little bit older and older, maybe unable to travel and move, I know that my siblings and I need to be the one to carry that banner to represent our Cuban culture. We can’t forget where we’re from. The Catholic Church is the organization that gave my parents hope. And I hope and pray that Catholics will continue to be that source of hope for migrants and refugees.

Nikki Gamer: Michael, Annie, Raul … Thank you so much for sharing your story with us.

Raul Trujillo: Thank you for having us.

Nikki Gamer: Join us next month when we talk about a very difficult time … April 1994 … when the Rwandan genocide shocked the world—and pierced the heart of the CRS family. Until then, check us out online at 75.crs.org. And don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast. Thank you.

Find out about the surprises we uncovered when the Catholic community in the United States welcomed thousands of Cuban refugees in the 1960s.

Nikki Gamer: Hi everyone, this is Nikki Gamer for Catholic Relief Services. Welcome back to Behind the Story, a podcast series that invites you to celebrate the people behind 75 years of our history—the people we serve, our partners, our staff … and especially the supporters who make our work possible.

Last month we took you on the Excellent Adventures of Monsignor Wilson Kaiser—on a VW bus, no less—setting up our first programs across sub-Saharan Africa in the 1950s. We talked to Ambassador Ken Hackett, former CEO of CRS, about Monsignor Kaiser’s lasting legacy.

This month, we’ll explore the 1950s from the other side of the world. We’ll learn about the important partnerships that helped millions of people in Asia recover from World War II. And about the famous “Noodle Priest of Hong Kong,” Monsignor John Romaniello, whose efforts to save 300,000 children from starvation put him on classic 1960s TV.

To tell us more, we’ll be talking to Frank Carlin, who had a 40-year career with CRS, both in Asia and Africa, starting in the 1960s.

Nikki Gamer: Frank, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us.

Frank Carlin: Thank you.

Nikki Gamer: You’ve written about our early work in Asia in the 1950s, and you credit four priests—whom you call the “Four Horsemen of Maryknoll”—for setting up CRS programs in Asia. Can you tell us about the conditions in Asia just after World War II?

Frank Carlin: In pre-war Asia, Japan had occupied major countries at the turn of the century: Korea and Taiwan, the Russian far east—as well as sections of China. In so doing, they created a lot of upheaval, fear and trauma. With the outbreak of the war in the ’40s, they started to go to war with countries throughout Asia. They took a lot of lives … they dislocated a lot of people.

Nikki Gamer: So, with all this upheaval, tell us what it was like for refugees.

Frank Carlin: First of all, refugees are always running. They’re in panic. They’re never sure where they’re going, and they’re chasing hope that’s rarely fulfilled.

They carry their most valued possessions, and often are forced to abandon them along the roads. Everybody hears, “Oh, if you go over here to this village they’re handing out food,” or “You go over to that town, and you can get plenty of water.” And then you get there, and there’s nothing. And then you start again—exhausted and impoverished.

Nikki Gamer: Tell us a little bit about the work of the Maryknoll priests and sisters in the immediate aftermath of the upheaval.

Frank Carlin: In the circumstances of CRS, we had a great blessing. And that’s where the story of the Four Horsemen comes in. In many countries, there were missionaries there—and they began to respond to the needs of the population, as best they could. Resources were a problem, and the infrastructure virtually nonexistent.

The role CRS undertook was to provide the assistance to the missionaries, who in turn would provide it to the people. And this marks the very big difference in Catholic Relief Services. We try to work through others to empower local indigenous organizations, oftentimes in the Church, to carry out that work so that we can do what we do best—and that is source the support and provide it with the technical assistance, to really make it work effectively.

Nikki Gamer: All right. So, did you coin the phrase, the “Four Horsemen”? Was that you?

Frank Carlin: Well, the “Four Horsemen” actually is a reference to the ’20s. Notre Dame had a backfield that they called the Four Horsemen, and the Four Horsemen ruled the playing field and they became famous.

And then out in Asia, I found my own Four Horsemen: Monsignor John Romaniello; Monsignor George M. Carroll; “the Duke,” Father Paul Duchaine; and Father Frank O’Neill. Each one of them came from a different location where they directed CRS operations. They helped to form my vocation in Catholic Relief Services.

Nikki Gamer: What can you tell us about Monsignor Romaniello? As I understand, he was called the “Noodle Priest of Hong Kong.”

Frank Carlin: Monsignor Romaniello was one of the old Asia hands who came out of China—all of these refugees that I had described earlier. He found that among their greatest needs was the need for food, which he was providing in the form of flour, milk and cooking oil—things like that—in a monthly ration from the American government. But what he quickly found out was that  people didn’t really have a recipe for milk and flour, and oil. They weren’t big bread eaters.

So Monsignor thought, “Well, hey, I can make the noodles.” But he didn’t know much about noodles. He was looking at two things: Number one, he wanted to have a noodle that had a very good nutritional impact, and he also started to design a noodle machine that could produce maybe 50 tons of noodles in a month, which is a lot. He could position the machine in the communities where the noodles would be consumed, and he could cut out the need for transportation. It was a very efficient operation. He transformed the nature of the assistance that was going into Hong Kong. And he was feeding, at the height of that program, 400,000 Chinese in Hong Kong. And he was providing a million pounds of noodles each month.

And as he put it together, he needed other funds. And he was a character—he was a colorful, colorful guy. He was born in Italy, and he had a twinkle in his eye. And he would go out and schmooze people and tell them, “You got to help me with the noodles.”

He always had this great capacity to engage others—whether it was donors, or the people in the community—to cooperate, to do something bigger than themselves. And, in order to draw attention to himself, he started to sing this noodle song that he had. Everybody would gather around, and they would find him just charming.

Nikki Gamer: Well, I think you know what I’m going to ask you next—and that is to sing the noodle song for our listeners.

Frank Carlin: Okay … well, I apologize for my poor singing ability but this one’s for you, Romi!

“Noodles in the morning, noodles in the evening, noodles at supper time. Eat them good old noodles, eat ’em all the time …”And I’m going to pause there because I don’t want to overdo it—I don’t want to overpower you with my singing prowess.

Nikki Gamer: I liked it. I was dancing along.

Frank Carlin: And when you add to that, when he came to the United States, he found his way onto TV shows that were running at that time.

TV Announcer: One of these three men is known as the “Noodle Priest.” What is your name, please? “My name is John Romaniello.” “My name is John Romaniello.” “My name is John Romaniello.” Only one of these men is the real John Romaniello, the Noodle Priest. The other two are impostors and will try to fool this panel: Merv Griffin, Betty White, Ralph Bellamy and Kitty Carlisle on To Tell the Truth, with your host, Bud Collyer!

Frank Carlin: In the late ’60s, when I’m getting on the Star Ferry to go across from Hong Kong to Kowloon, there’s a deckhand there, and he says to me, “So where do you work?” and I tell him I’m with Catholic Relief Services – 天主教护理会 (tian zhu jiao hu li hui). And he says, “Ah, Father Noodles, he saved my whole family’s life.” And he never met him. Never saw him. And wouldn’t recognize him if he did. But that’s the impact that somebody like Monsignor Romaniello had on people. He was first and foremost a priest.

Nikki Gamer: What do you consider the biggest legacy of CRS in Asia in those days?

Frank Carlin: Catholic Relief was very instrumental in organizing, establishing, empowering local organizations.

We didn’t just provide the assistance, and then boogie on out. We provided the assistance in a manner in which we were empowering and developing organizations to do the job. They learned how to do it. So we worked ourselves out of a job in every one of those countries that I spoke of where the Horsemen were: Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Hong Kong.

Nikki Gamer: Can you talk, briefly, about the variety of programs that we offered in Asia at that time?

Frank Carlin: In the early years, late ’40s and ’50s, it was very much emergency focused. So, we were providing the food. We were providing access to water. We were providing basic shelter, health, sanitation—even a bar of soap was a big thing. We were supporting the clinics that were run by Maryknoll and Columbans and the Medical Mission Sisters.

Nikki Gamer: And, back in the U.S., I understand that Catholics were very responsive, and very compassionate in their support of all the people suffering overseas.

Frank Carlin: We had what was called the Thanksgiving Clothing Collection. For 40 years, every parish in the United States had a collection. And then you’d have the Legion of Mary and the Knights of Columbus, and the Holy Name Society. They’d truck it to Brooklyn, New York. And when it came in, you’d send it out to these areas that the missionaries were providing assistance from. And in a place like Korea—where you had winter—boy, those overcoats and jackets … they were lifesaving.

Nikki Gamer: Can you talk to us a little about the most vulnerable groups?

Frank Carlin: I mean, you had hundreds of thousands of orphans in these countries. Not a thousand, not 10,000—100,000. Nobody to care for them. The only option was an institutional program.And the people that were running the institutional programs were the Christian organizations.There are hundreds of thousands of people today that are alive, and have their own children and grandchildren, because their lives were saved by those orphanages.

We provided assistance to leper communities—Hansen’s disease is the way we referred to it. We provided to the handicapped, the disabled, unwed mothers. These were the institutions where you had the most vulnerable, the most at risk—and the Church did a lot to provide for them.

Nikki Gamer: Can you tell us about some of the other programming? I understand we provided health assistance for mothers and children, and microcredit.

Frank Carlin: We operated sophisticated nutritional programs for the severely malnourished. We provided school feeding programs. So we used the food that was now coming in greater quantities from the American government. We were the ones who got the American government to agree to use food-for-work, and it’s in the lexicon of USAID today. But it started with Catholic Relief Services.

Nikki Gamer: Wow—that is such a legacy. I did not realize that we played a part in that.

Frank Carlin: The effect was significant because with food-for-work we were able to build farm-to-market roads. We did land reclamation projects. We did irrigation projects, we did well-digging projects—all with food-for-work.

As we started to get into the late ’50s, CRS began—through these missionaries—to promote the establishment of the credit union movement. You train people, you position them, you salary them—and then you get them to go out to communities. And, basically, you’re starting a community bank.

Catholic Relief Services is credited today by the international cooperative movement and the international credit union movement as being the founder of the credit union and cooperative movement in many of the countries in Asia. And that’s quite an accomplishment.

Nikki Gamer: So, in all of this groundbreaking work, how important was partnership?

Frank Carlin: Partnerships. CRS could never have done all that it has done, and continues to do, without strong partnerships. The people have to trust you.

There are many organizations that go out there, but they don’t have what we have. We can plug into an indigenous structure, or we can plug into a faith-based structure. We respect one another because of that which motivates us: faith, a biblical mandate, a love of God.

Nikki Gamer: Let me ask you this: On the occasion of our 75 anniversary, what is your hope for the future?

Frank Carlin: What I want to hope for is an agency that, in the next 25 years, it’s as flexible and as adaptable as it has been for the past 75. I hope that we’ll continue to have a staff that will be not just committed and dedicated, but faith-filled—with a fire in the belly that’s apparent, visible—and really work zealously to transform the world that they find themselves in.

We’ve had a formula for success from our inception, working ourselves out of a job, and that will continue to be the way in which we will find success. So, that would be my hope.

Nikki Gamer: Frank Carlin, thank you so much for joining us.

Frank Carlin: You’re more than welcome.

Nikki Gamer: Next month, in honor of Mother’s Day, we’ll be taking a look back at the women who inspire us. It might not surprise you to know that Mother Teresa is one of them. But until then, thanks for listening. And, if you want to find out more, check us out online at 75.crs.org. And don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast!

Notre Dame Victory March audio clip published with permission of MPL Music Publishing Inc.

Sugartime audio clip published with permission of Tency music.

To Tell the Truth audio clip published with permission of Fremantle Media International LTD.

Nikki Gamer: Hi everyone, this is Nikki Gamer for Catholic Relief Services. Welcome back to Behind the Story, a podcast series that invites you to celebrate the people behind 75 years of our history—the people we serve, our partners, our staff … and especially the supporters, like you, who make our work possible.

Last month we took you to 1945, New York City, on that foggy, fateful Saturday morning when a B-25 bomber crashed into the Empire State Building … and the offices of Catholic Relief Services. And we were lucky enough to talk to Dana Robinson, whose grandfather, John J. Raskob, built the Empire State Building.

This month, we’ll explore the 1950s and the excellent adventures of Dana’s former boss, Monsignor Wilson Kaiser, who—legend has it—drove across Africa in a VW bus, setting up our earliest programs there.

You’ll hear from Ambassador Ken Hackett—former CEO of Catholic Relief Services, and more recently, former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See. Ambassador Hackett worked closely with Monsignor Kaiser early in his career, both in Africa and at the Empire State Building in New York.

Ambassador Hackett, thank you so much for joining us. I understand you began working for CRS in the 1970s, and I hear that applying to CRS wasn’t as easy as you had hoped.

Ambassador Ken Hackett: Well, when I returned from the Peace Corps in August of 1971, I got interviews with CARE and United Nations, and I got turned down by Catholic Relief Services.  So that kind of distressed me a little bit. And I had a friend who was the CRS diocesan director in Connecticut. And he said, “Well, I know somebody and I’ll get you an interview,” and indeed he did.

He set up an interview in New York with a Monsignor Landi, who was the assistant executive director, and Monsignor Landi, when I got to him, said, “You need to talk to Monsignor Will Kaiser. ” And we had a chat and Monsignor Kaiser said, “What can you do ?” And I said, “Well Monsignor, I can do just about anything.”

And Monsignor said, “Would you like to go back to Africa?” And I was on my way to Sierra Leone, West Africa.

Nikki Gamer: I love how you brought us right to the main character, Monsignor Kaiser. So tell us a little bit about what he was like and what that first meeting was like. What did you notice about him?

Ambassador Ken Hackett: Monsignor Kaiser was all about people. So that warmth, that humanness that was really apparent when I first met him. He was the regional director for Africa. And yet he had been recently moved back from Kenya to the headquarters in New York. He didn’t like bureaucracy very much. And he chafed under a headquarters-oriented organization. He was a field person. In fact, I’m looking over at a sign that used to be on his desk that says “trust the troops.” He was all about that. You’re on the frontline. You see the situation. You understand the context. Make the decision. Maybe pray a little bit, but make the decision and we’ll go with it because you are there.

Nikki Gamer: Where do you think he got all that energy?

Ambassador Ken Hackett: It’s interesting in that if you look at his early days, he was a priest from Rochester, New York, who, after he was ordained, was transferred to Billings, Montana. I mean that’s kind of a real cultural change. This is now in the—I think—late 30s. And he was a parish priest. He was a boxing coach. He ran the C.Y.O. And then, from what he tells, they were looking for somebody to go with War Relief Services to Germany after the war. And they looked down the list. They saw “Kaiser.” They said, “Ha, he must speak German. Get him.”

Nikki Gamer: Because of his last name.

Ambassador Ken Hackett: They called his bishop, and he said, “Bishop, we want to have this Wilson Kaiser come to work with War Relief Services in Berlin.” And that was the beginning of his career with CRS.

Nikki Gamer: Wow. I love that it all happened because of a name.

Ambassador Ken Hackett: Yeah. And he never spoke a word of German.

Nikki Gamer: OK, so there’s a legend that Monsignor Kaiser traveled across Africa in a VW bus. Is this true? And if so, tell us the story.

Ambassador Ken Hackett: He was on a mission to see what he could do. He bought a VW bus and, allegedly, drove down to Gibraltar. He took a ferry across and went into Morocco. Upon arriving in Morocco, he learned, well, you don’t just drive a VW bus by yourself across the continent of Africa. There were no roads to speak of. They were all dirt tracks. So he found other ways of moving down the west coast by boat.

So, in a very short period of time he covered the continent, opening up CRS programs in at least 20 countries. He was intrepid. I mean, this was late ’50s, early ’60s. There was lots of malaria, dysentery, all kinds of things. But off he went. He had limited resources. He had a little bit of money, not a lot. He had U.S. government food.  And he had medicines from the Catholic Medical Mission Board.

And he also had something else that I didn’t mention before. He had a desire to promote the indigenous Church, and he sponsored many priests who later become bishops to do their studies in the United States. And that’s a lasting legacy of his.

Nikki Gamer: So why do you think he was so successful at building partnerships?

Ambassador Ken Hackett: So, he walked in as a benevolent, benign, generous individual who automatically you had a sense that this man is here for us, and he just developed some very important, wonderful relations that lasted a long time with the initial people he met. What he was responsible for is supporting the growth and founding of Caritas organizations in each African country.

They needed a mechanism to expand their confederation throughout the world, and CRS, in general, took it as part of its mission to foster the growth of Caritas. So, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, Monsignor Kaiser was the critical person in giving the initial money, giving the initial training to the early Caritas directors in so many of the African countries.

Nikki Gamer: Can you tell us what kind of relief and development work Monsignor Kaiser started in Africa?

Ambassador Ken Hackett: Well, in the early days, CRS programming was very much built around school feeding, maternal and child health programs, both of which dealt with U.S. government food. It was the distribution of food. It was a logistics challenge. Secondly, CRS distributed used clothes that were collected in churches throughout the United States, and shipped to Africa and Latin America. And thirdly, medicine from Catholic Medical Mission Board, which was donated from pharmaceutical companies.

So there wasn’t much money, and there were some very generous donors, like the Raskob Foundation, like the W. O’Neil Foundation and a few other family foundations that Monsignor Kaiser personally developed a relationship with. I think many of us learned something that Monsignor Kaiser was telling us. It’s not about the stuff you have or the money you have. It’s about the relations you develop. You developed relationships with people from the lady at the maternal and child health center to the president of the country, and the relationships were all basically the same. They were on just respect. And I think that’s the lasting legacy of what CRS can do.

Nikki Gamer: So, what about the role of women, mostly religious sisters, in our early health programs. Can you tell us specifically about one woman that Monsignor Kaiser had on his team, Sister Fredericka Jacobs? As I understand it, she was known as Sister “Fred.”

Ambassador Ken Hackett: Sister Fredericka was this Notre Dame sister, American, who was living in Nairobi with a Ph.D. in biology from, I think, Trinity College in Washington. Dr. Carlo Capone, who was a Consolata priest, brought her in as his first deputy, and she and Capone were just a dynamic team.

Capone recognized that one of the big problems was maternal and child health. He would evolve a program for CRS to deal with this question, and it would involve improved nutrition and medical attention for mothers in pre- and post-natal care.

But Sister Fredericka went and opened up programs. And in every country where CRS worked and could access U.S. government food—which would be the impetus to the maternal and child health program—Sister Fredericka identified a public health nurse, either native in that country or from somewhere in the French speaking countries, most of them were French. She was selfless. But also brilliant. And she was the one that really took the concepts that Dr. Capone evolved, and in the day, those concepts were pretty cutting edge.

Nikki Gamer: Why was it so important then to bring in women as part of this work?

Ambassador Ken Hackett: So there wasn’t a lot of thought like, “We’ve got to have gender equity here.” It just didn’t even occur to anybody. Fredericka was the best qualified, the right person. The public health nurses just happened to be women, but they were the best.

Nikki Gamer: Some of these characters from our history are just so remarkable. You consider Monsignor Kaiser a hero and a mentor. So, when you think of him now, what stands out as the most remarkable and enduring part of his legacy?

Ambassador Ken Hackett: Oh, I think the opening up of sub-Saharan Africa is the most enduring part. You know, there was nobody telling him how to do it. He said a prayer and he jumped. And that’s wonderful. The second point is how wonderful he was with his people. I mean he was very much a pastor. He was committed to the mission of CRS, of helping people.

Nikki Gamer: Thanks so much for your time with us today, Ambassador. I hope you’ll join us again as we continue to explore our 75^th.  And I know you have a lot more stories to share.

Ambassador Ken Hackett: You’re very welcome. And good luck to everybody.

Nikki Gamer: Coming up next month, we’ll learn about the famous “Noodle Priest” of Hong Kong, Monsignor John Romaniello, whose efforts to save 300,000 children from starvation put him on the classic 1960s TV shows To Tell the Truth and What’s My Line. But until then, thanks for listening. And if you can’t wait until our next podcast, check us out online at 75.crs.org.