The Catholic Roots of U.S. Foreign Assistance: From Good Neighbors to Allies for Progress

Abstract

The United States Catholic Church has played an underappreciated role in U.S. foreign policy, especially in Latin America. U.S. Catholics entered the global stage during World War I by serving in the military and organizing the National Catholic War Council (later the National Catholic Welfare Conference [NCWC]) to facilitate dissemination of aid to American soldiers and European refugees. This effort was encouraged by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and supplemented by other domestic efforts. This article traces the development of U.S. Catholic international assistance and argues that it provided the foundation for a much more expansive civil-Catholic collaboration that evolved during the John F. Kennedy Administration. Neither the Catholic Church nor the U.S. government controlled the mutually reinforcing relationship. Instead, it grew as each looked to the other to extend foreign aid, especially during the era of the Cold War when opposing the spread of communism was a defining goal of both church and state.