As we close the first quarter of the 21st century, we find a world in conflict and sociocultural, economic and political chaos. The optimism and hopes of the end of the previous century have evaporated, replaced instead with pessimism, fear, anger and resentment. 

“In this time,” Pope Leo XIV said in his homily inaugurating his pontificate on 18 May 2025, “we still see too much discord, too many wounds caused by hatred, violence, prejudice, the fear of difference, and an economic paradigm that exploits the earth’s resources and marginalizes the poorest.”

For the church’s part, he continued, “we want to be a small leaven of unity, communion and fraternity within the world. We want to say to the world, with humility and joy: Look to Christ! Come closer to him! Welcome his word that enlightens and consoles! Listen to his offer of love and become his one family: In the one Christ, we are one.”

As an agency of the Holy See, Catholic Near East Welfare Association has, since its founding by Pope Pius XI on 11 March 1926, worked as that “small leaven of unity, communion and fraternity,” specifically among the peoples of the Eastern churches, and the marginalized and vulnerable served through the many pastoral and humanitarian works of these communities of faith. 

CNEWA began as a ray of light, a glimmer of hope during a particularly dark period in the history of humanity. The “War to End All Wars” — World War I — foreshadowed greater devastation long after the armistice ended the war in 1918, unleashing crises on a massive scale as the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and Russian empires collapsed. 

Moved by the plight of millions of survivors of war, genocide and revolution, and a firm advocate of church unity, particularly among Catholics and Orthodox, Pope Benedict XV initiated church-led humanitarian responses in Asia Minor and Europe. His successor, Pius XI, continued these efforts after Benedict’s premature death in January 1922, reaching out to Catholics in the United States, including the founder of the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement, the Rev. Paul Wattson, a zealous advocate of church unity who in 1908 founded the Octave of Church Unity when still an Episcopalian.

Moved by the pope’s appeals for help, Father Paul encouraged his supporters, mainly in the pages of his monthly magazine, The Lamp, to fund the tireless Greek Catholic Bishop George Calavassy and the English military chaplain, Msgr. Richard Barry-Doyle, who together worked among the tens of thousands of Armenians, Assyro-Chaldeans, Greeks and anti-Bolshevik Russian refugees inundating Constantinople — the capital of the dissipating Ottoman world.

In December 1924, Father Paul, Msgr. Barry-Doyle and a group of prominent Catholic laymen established in Philadelphia “the Catholic Near East Welfare Association” as a vehicle to assist Bishop Calavassy’s work with the displaced Christians of the “Near East.” Msgr. Barry-Doyle’s theatrical speaking circuit, entitled “The Call of the East,” packed concert halls across the United States — including Manhattan’s Carnegie Hall — and raised awareness and funds to help this CNEWA prototype address the needs of the displaced in Constantinople.

The activities of the “Children’s Crusader,” as Msgr. Barry-Doyle was called, complemented the more cerebral efforts of a German Benedictine priest, Augustine von Galen. The elder brother of Bishop Clemens von Galen — the famed anti-Nazi cardinal known as the “Lion of Munster” — Father von Galen traveled to North America in 1924 at the behest of the Sacred Congregation for the Eastern Churches to raise awareness and funds for the Catholic Union, which advocated for the reunion of the Catholic and Orthodox churches, which popes Benedict XV and Pius XI enthusiastically promoted. Relief and reunion were not mutually exclusive and, in March 1926, with the urging of members of the U.S. Catholic hierarchy, the pope combined these two organizations into a single papal agency with its board of directors chaired ex officio by the archbishop of New York. The pope retained the name Catholic Near East Welfare Association, thereby centralizing and strengthening the various efforts of the Eastern churches throughout what was then called the Near East. 

Nearly a quarter of a century after Pope Pius XI founded CNEWA, his successor appointed CNEWA’s Msgr. Thomas J. McMahon as president of an ad hoc task force of the Holy See to coordinate worldwide Catholic aid for Palestinian refugees, hundreds of thousands of whom had fled their homes after the hasty departure of British troops from Mandatory Palestine in 1948. Pius XII placed the leadership and administration of Pontifical Mission under CNEWA, and his successors have extended and made permanent its mandate for the needs of all vulnerable people throughout the Middle East.

Relief and reunion, in a nutshell, describe the narrative of this agency of healing and hope these past 100 years. And in times where nothing is certain but continued division, chaos and conflict, CNEWA remains a beacon of hope, a leaven for unity, communion and fraternity. 

An integral component of the bishop of Rome as the successor of Peter as pontifex maximus — the ultimate bridge-builder — CNEWA continues to counter modern society and its exploitation of humanity’s inherent differences, whether by nationality, ethnicity, religion, politics or culture. Instead, CNEWA takes another path, one urged by our present pontiff, “with our sister Christian churches, with those who follow other religious paths, with those who are searching for God, with all women and men of good will, in order to build a new world where peace reigns! …

“Together, as one people, as brothers and sisters, let us walk toward God and love one another.” 

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