If the United States is to reduce poverty by 50 percent in the next 10 years, it will take the concerted efforts of all, from individuals to non-profits and faith-based agencies to the government, according to speakers at Catholic Charities USA’s Centennial Leadership Summit held April 29 in Chicago. Catholic Charities agencies around the United States have seen poverty grow, with more people needing help meeting their basic needs. Many counted themselves among the middle class until recently, said Father Larry Snyder, president of Catholic Charities USA, and more of them are families with at least one member working. But those who are jobless are finding it more difficult to find work, especially work that pays well enough to provide a family with food, housing and medical care. “This is not news to Catholic Charities organizations or other social services providers in this country,” Snyder said. The day-long event was one of 10 regional gatherings planned to unite policy-makers, university professors, community and corporate leaders and social service providers to focus on solutions to the national moral crisis of poverty. They were planned in recognition of Catholic Charities USA’s 100th anniversary of serving people in need, and will culminate with a national event in September in Washington, D.C. CCUSA is the national membership agency for local Catholic Charities organizations. Responding to needs Because while Catholic Charities responds to the concrete needs of people in poverty, coming to the assistance of 8.5 million last year alone, it also must act as their advocate, working to change the conditions that allow poverty to persist, said Snyder. “The work of Catholic Charities has been the work of standing with the poor and marginalized and the disenfranchised,” Snyder said, “to act as the attorney for the poor in the forum of policy-setting.” The United States has cut the poverty rate in half before, from 22 percent in 1958 to 11 percent in 1971, Snyder said. Last year, the national poverty rate hit 13.2 percent. “If we have the political will, we will be able to reduce poverty in this challenging time,” Snyder said. “We have the creativity and the resources to overcome any obstacle.” It is immoral that one in six children in the United States live in poverty, said Jim Ryan, a former Illinois attorney general and twotime Republican gubernatorial candidate. Ryan, now a faculty member at Benedictine University in Lisle, Ill., moderated a discussion of regional responses to poverty that included Mary Ellen Caron, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Family and Support Services; Terry Mazany, president and CEO of the Chicago Community Trust; and Stephen Roach, executive director of Catholic Charities in Springfield. Caron, who has worked as a Catholic school teacher and principal before moving to Chicago Public Schools and then the city of Chicago, said the solution to poverty lies in education in the broadest sense, including job training and supporting families so that children are able to learn. “Children cannot learn if they are hungry, if there is no job in the entire household, if there is mental illness, either within the child or an adult who is caring for them,” Caron said. Roach, who works in the epicenter of Illinois’s budget crisis, said that calling on the government for more money won’t work. As of April, the state owed Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago, the largest private social service provider in the state, $13 million for services it had already provided. “Clearly, government funding isn’t a viable option,” he said. “How are we supposed to continue to feed people, provide health care and homes for people?” “The solution will not come from Washington,” Snyder said. “Poverty is not a monolith. It does not look the same in Chicago or Detroit or Cleveland as it looks in Portland or Wichita or Brooklyn.” Once Catholic Charities finishes its regional summits, it will propose legislation to alleviate poverty. While the bill has not yet been written, Snyder said he expects it to focus on using money in new ways. Awards presented At the meeting, Snyder presented the prestigious Centennial Medal to Allison Boisvert, a social justice minister for the Pax Christi Catholic community in the Archdiocese of Minneapolis-St. Paul; Mercy Sister Rosemary Connelly, director of Chicago’s Misericordia Home, and a posthumous award to Father Roger Coughlin, former associate administrator of Catholic Charities, who died April 15. The summit also included an awards presentation honoring two Catholic Charities programs, Catholic Charities Financial Health Counseling in the Diocese of Green Bay and St. Leo Campus of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago. The St. Leo Campus is comprised of four different programs designed to improve the community’s capacity to serve its veterans. Each agency received a $25,000 award to invest in further development of their program.