Catholic Relief Services

After back-to-back natural disasters in recent weeks, the Cuban people “are suffering immense hardships and … need our help,” said Archbishop Nelson J. Pérez of Philadelphia.

In 2023, the Labor Department found 5,800 children employed in violation of child labor laws, an 88% increase since 2019. Of the 955 child labor cases completed by federal regulators in 2023, over 50% involved minors employed in violation of hazardous occupation laws.

Reacting to “heartbreaking scenes” of death and destruction in Turkey and Syria, the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ international policy committee urged U.S. Catholics and all people of goodwill to pray for the victims of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that rocked the two countries Feb. 6 and to give generously to those in need.

“The church did not close during the pandemic,” Sean Callahan, president and CEO of Catholic Relief Services, told the U.S. bishops during their Nov. 14-17 general assembly in Baltimore.

Caritas agencies, including Catholic Relief Services, are working to distribute aid for thousands affected by floods that have devastated the region.

Various Catholic agencies are collecting donations to aid with the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, as people flee to escape Russian bombing and shelling.

“CRS has been working on a response to this climate-induced drought over the past two years. But the rest of the world is only waking up to the fact that we have the worst climate-induced drought in the world right now — the worst in living memory in Afghanistan,” said Kevin Hartigan, the Middle East regional director of Catholic Relief Services.

Relief workers in Haiti said the Aug. 14 earthquake might not be as catastrophic as the 2010 quake that was closer to the capital, but recovery will be complicated because the quake came on the heels of July’s presidential assassination, of an economic and ongoing political crisis, the coronavirus pandemic and an active storm season now underway.