Service is a cornerstone of our Christian lives, and Father Dave welcomes Kerry Robinson, President and CEO of Catholic Charities USA, to discuss a new museum that showcases this virtue. “People of Hope: Faith-Filled Stories of Neighbors Helping Neighbors” is a traveling storytelling museum that highlights the impact of being present for others. The mobile museum begins its three-year journey around the United States starting this week in New York City.
Kerry first explains the broader work of the organization. “Catholic Charities USA is a membership organization comprised of 169 independent local agencies, loosely correlating to the number of dioceses that there are in the United States. We are in all 50 states, five U.S. territories and the District of Columbia,” she says, noting their mission to provide help and hope for those in need. “[Every local Catholic Charities agency] has their own strategic response to poverty in their immediate environment. Poverty looks different in different parts of the country, and thus the response is different.”
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“Catholic Charities USA is also the official disaster response agency of the Catholic Church in the U.S. So whenever there is a tornado, a wildfire, a hurricane, etc. – We snap into action. We raise money, and 100% of what we raise gets deployed at the local level to immediately help people recover,” Kerry continues.
They discuss the new People of Hope Museum and how it was made possible by a grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. “We are using that grant to retrofit a tractor trailer and, when it arrives in your town, it expands outward and becomes a museum that you can literally walk through. There, you are treated to beautifully, professionally rendered short stories that are told by Catholic Charities full -time staff and volunteers,” Kerry explains. “They are explaining how their faith and their lives were positively impacted through an encounter with a particular client or a family in need. It is absolutely exquisite.”
“Honestly, I think Kleenex should co-sponsor this museum. It will restore your faith in humankind, because these are not famous people,” she continues. “These are not people who are serving for any kind of accolade or to be featured in this museum. They are just quietly going about the work of the Gospel in a very concrete, immediate, and beautiful way.”
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Father Dave underscores that serving others is crucial to our faith. “It’s easy to be very devout in a spiritual practice, but think that other people should help folks or do good things. It’s very constitutive of our faith to actually live the Gospel as Jesus commanded,” he says. “Any way in which we can kind of remind ourselves that it’s not just about going to Church and praying to God. Jesus didn’t create a society of a prayer group; it really is about living our faith.”
Kerry describes how the museum features facts about poverty in the United States both on a state and national level. “You will be moved both in terms of your cognitive understanding about poverty, and it will move your heart. There’s a call to action: How does the experience of hearing these stories and learning about poverty make you want to be a better person?” She says, and notes that you can record your own story of how service has impacted you. “I think it will help bridge divisions and expose the lie that we are forever divided. In fact, we have so much in common, and the thing that we have in common is we care.”