Collaborative on Global Children's Issues

Our first duty as a human people is hospitality to the young. We are called to welcome them into our world, to protect them from the most disruptive currents of modern life, to give them space and place to grow and flourish, and to entrust the future to them. Yet, increasingly so, children are particularly vulnerable to extreme poverty, environmental instability, disease, migration, and political upheaval. In this era of increased disruptions to family life and civil society from these vulnerabilities and accompanying instability, we are called to reemphasize the work that best insulates children. This means prioritizing the health and stability of families, in which children can best thrive and attain their full and God-given potential.

As a global community, we have participated in striking gains in human development in the past three decades—in life expectancy and overall decreases in child mortality. Many children are still left behind, but a path forward is visible to us. Even so, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports that infectious diseases, including pneumonia, diarrhea, and malaria, along with other complications before and during birth, remain the leading causes of death for children under 5 years. Access to basic lifesaving interventions, such as skilled delivery at birth, postnatal care, breastfeeding and adequate nutrition, vaccinations, and treatment for common childhood diseases, can save many young lives. Moreover, nearly eight million children live in orphanages around the world, but 80 to 90 percent of these children have a living parent who often could act as caregiver if supports such as health care, access to education, and financial relief were in place. Child-family separation and the historical development of residential care facilities, often called orphanages, are most often a product of poverty, plus at least one other contributing factor, such as illness, disability, natural disaster, job loss, divorce, addiction, or violence and conflict.

A crescendo of voices from social science, international law, and Catholic social thought reflect the global community’s awakening to the urgent needs and rights of children and families in our increasingly chaotic world. Psychologists and sociologists remind us of what we already know: that children flourish best with their family; that it is in their family that they can find the necessary bedrocks of identity and healthy attachment. Children raised in families demonstrate better physical, intellectual, and developmental outcomes compared with children raised in orphanages.

The governments of almost every country in the world, as well as the Holy See, have committed to the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child, which protects a child’s right to live with a family (the United States government played an active role in drafting the convention and signed it on February 16, 1995, but has not ratified it). These commitments became even more targeted when the UN General Assembly adopted the 2019 Resolution on the Rights of the Child, pledging to end the institutionalization of children in their respective countries and prioritize family care. For the first time in history, all 193 member states of the United Nations agreed that orphanages are not the best option for the health and development of children, that most children in orphanages have living family, and all children should be reunited with, or supported to remain with, their families. Where this is not possible or in the child’s best interest, the resolution says that governments should commit to provide high-quality, family and community-based alternative care for children.

Catholic social teaching affirms the primacy of the family as the vital cell of society and necessary for its authentic growth. The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, a 2004 work issued by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace to offer "a complete overview of the fundamental framework of the doctrinal corpus of Catholic social teaching,” devotes a chapter to the Church's teaching on the importance of family for the person and the importance of the family for society. Chapter five pulls from a variety of Church teachings, including the Catechism of the Catholic Church; the Second Vatican Council’s pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes (1966) and decree Apostolicam Actuositatem (1966); St. John Paul II’s apostolic exhortations Familiaris Consortio (1982) and Christifideles Laici (1989), encyclical Centesimus Annus (1991), and letter to families Gratissimam Sane (1994); and the Charter of the Rights of the Family, Preamble (1983).

Moreover, Catholic social teaching issues an urgent call to act. In his apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio (the Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World), St. John Paul II issued an urgent appeal to the Church to act to “love the family” and devote itself to “the family’s welfare.” He implored: “The future of humanity passes by way of the family. It is therefore indispensable and urgent that every person of good will should endeavor to save and foster the values and requirements of the family. I feel that I must ask for a particular effort in this field from the sons and daughters of the Church… They must show the family special love. This is an injunction that calls for concrete action” [no. 86]. And so, we must further articulate and assert today that the child has certain sacrosanct rights for the good of the person and society.

Catholic social teaching is both a call to respond to and simultaneously, an articulation of our living and maturing response as Christians to often seemingly intractable social ills. Catholic social teaching is the acknowledgement that we find and come to understand our God and who we as Church, as Christian disciples, when we endeavor to act in the world to live the Gospel and mature these actions through reflection. Like all Catholic social teaching before, our tradition is living and breathing and calls to us to be present in the modern moment to act, learn, enshrine and protect the rights and dignity of the person.

Catholic Relief Services’ (CRS) experience and work around the world has led us to create CRS’ Vision 2030, in which the goal that “all children achieve their full health and development potential in safe and nourishing families” is central and one of five agency-wide goals. One of our specific targets for 2030 is to support 700,000 children around the world to live in safe and nurturing families. The potential of the Church to help bring this forth is massive. Today, of the more than 7.5 million children living in orphanages around the world, an estimated 5.5 million reside in 9,000 Catholic institutions.

CRS’ decades of experience, learning, and reflection must serve the Church’s ongoing social teaching. CRS and partners around the world have come to understand the inviolable connection between the well-being of children in families and the vitality of society. This focal point for development provides context and meaning for our work and unites global efforts behind a common cause of sustaining and empowering families. No institution can replace what their family offers a child: the necessary identity and attachment that is key to healthy development of the child and society. At the same time, institutions can sustain and protect vulnerable families so that they can do the most basic and important work of caring for the young and entrusting them with the future.

Roberto Navarro is the senior director of U.S. church engagement at Catholic Relief Services (CRS). In this role, Roberto works with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and Catholic leaders to foster participation in CRS campaigns and chapters to address global poverty and advocate for our sisters and brothers around the world.