A Conversation with
Sean Callahan President & CEO of Catholic Relief Services
Sean Callahan is president and CEO of Catholic Relief Services, the international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States. As a 34-year agency veteran, Callahan has held a wide variety of leadership roles overseas and at agency headquarters in Baltimore, Maryland. In addition to overseeing the worldwide operations of CRS, Callahan is the first vice president of Caritas Internationalis, the confederation of 162 Catholic relief, development, and social service organizations operating in over 200 countries and territories. He sat down with a staff member of the C21 Center to discuss his vocation to international relief work and the role of faith in CRS’s global engagement.
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What role did your faith and upbringing in the Church play in your deciding to go into international affairs and work for CRS? For me, faith was really about giving back. I was an altar boy with my two brothers, so our local church always knew it could get Sunday morning altar servers just by calling the Callahans. My Boston College alumni parents had instilled the Ignatian values from BC in us. And my aunt and uncle both were Maryknoll missionaries. Unfortunately, they have both passed away. They would come back to the States and show slideshows at our house until late at night. We’d be learning about Guatemala, the Philippines, and other countries. After I did my graduate work, the first thing I thought of was, what can I do to give back? I was finishing school, and there was a gentleman in the lobby at the Fletcher School. As I walked by him, he looked up at me and said, “Is it time for you to give something back?” And I thought, this is strange, because I’ve always had that inside me. I said, “Where are you from?” And he said, “Catholic Relief Services, and I’m interviewing people for a one-year internship. How would you like to go overseas?” We talked for a little while and I wound up interviewing with him the next day. Then I went through the hiring process, and my mother has now finally stopped asking me when I’m going to get a real job!
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c21 resources | spring/summer 2022
I’ve always understood that there is a difference with CRS—it believes strongly in working with local populations and not simply going in and dictating what needs to be done for them. Yes, exactly. That’s what we try to do: listen to the local people, find out what they need, and then move forward. You know, our feeling is that the protagonists in development work aren’t those of us who are coming in, it’s those who are already there. Our role is to highlight the importance of those local people on the ground and recognize the work they’re doing. Their development is in their own hands. So when you’re in these dire situations, is there a place for your faith? Can you draw on that faith or are these circumstances so fast-moving and stressful that you have no time to step back and consider the big picture? I really think that faith is an essential component of it. The tagline of CRS is “faith, action, and results,” and faith comes first. But I do think that in the rush to get things done we can get ahead of ourselves. I was once in South Sudan and we were crossing the Nile River. We went through a bunch of different villages and went to schools and water projects, and we were trying to be respectful of each of the communities and hearing how they were going. But we got to our last group and we were two hours late. We told them that we weren’t going to be able to have the same meeting that we had hoped for. We said, “Could you just tell us how the microfinance has been, because we have to get a boat and get across the river before sundown; otherwise we’ll be stuck.” Then a woman stood up in the middle of the group and said, “Sir, this is no way to start a meeting. We have to invoke the power of God to bless our words and to bless our work.” I thought, wow, she really understands who has brought us together here. Let’s take that time to thank Him, no matter what. So I said, “Would you open with a prayer?” And we did. And I must say, we were in a rush, we were concerned about security, but we realized that it’s not all in our own hands, that it really is in God’s hands. He put her there to let us know that we can learn from the people that we’re serving as well.
