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Caritas Internationalis

  • Reference work entry
International Encyclopedia of Civil Society

Address of Organization

Palazzo San Calisto 00120 Vatican City Rome Italy www.caritas.org

Introduction

Within the spectrum of civil society organizations Caritas stands out as being unique and distinctive in its origin and history as well as in the breadth of its goals and activities. The name stems from the Latin word for charity or virtue, it represents 162 Catholic organizations in the field of international relief aid and social and human development and remains a pioneer in the promotion of humanitarian and equalitarian causes.

History

Caritas was founded by a German priest Lorenz Werthmann in Freiburg, in 1897 and quickly spread to other countries with establishment in Switzerland in 1901 and the United States in 1910. Central to its global spread was Giovanni Battista Montini, the future Pope Paul VI. Elevating it to international status in 1954, Montini enabled Caritas to form an international platform and it became officially known as Caritas Internationalisin 1957. Today it...

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References/Further Readings

  • Caritas Annual Report and other Caritas Publications, from http://www.caritas.org/resources/publications/index.html.

  • Jedin, H., Adriányi, G., Dolan, J., & Repgen, K. (1981). History of the church (Vol. 10, Chap. 14) London: Continuum International Publishing Group.

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  • Murphy, C. M. (2007, June). Charity, not justice, as constitutive of the church’s mission. Theological Studies, 68(2), 274–286.

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  • Schmidhalt, M. (2005). The history of Caritas Internationalis. Rome: Caritas.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Business, Limerick Institute of Technology, Moylish Park, Office 3C-16, Limerick, Ireland

    Pauric O’Rourke

Authors
  1. Pauric O’Rourke
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany

    Helmut K. Anheier

  2. Hertie School of Governance, Berlin, Germany

    Helmut K. Anheier

  3. George Mason University, Arlington, VA, USA

    Stefan Toepler

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© 2010 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

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O’Rourke, P. (2010). Caritas Internationalis. In: Anheier, H.K., Toepler, S. (eds) International Encyclopedia of Civil Society. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-93996-4_329

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-93996-4_329

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-387-93994-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-0-387-93996-4

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