In a statement published on social media on Sept 23, Caritas International said it was "shocked by the news of the death of our colleague, Dieudonné Barondezi, director of the Caritas branch in Kalonge, in the Democratic Republic of Congo."

"Dieudonné was shot in the head on Sept 19 at a roadblock, in the village of Cholobero, by members of an armed group who demanded he pay the toll, even though, as a humanitarian, he was not obliged to do so," the Catholic charitable organisation said.

Barondezi was taken to a hospital following the shooting, where he was declared dead.

"Let us pray for him, his family, and all humanitarians worldwide who lose their lives to help others," Caritas said.

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The Catholic charity is a member of Caritas Internationalis - confederation of Catholic relief groups. It is one of Luxembourg's largest charities.

Caritas Luxembourg says it is providing counselling for its almost 500 employees. They are "deeply shaken" by the scandal Caritas says.

The theft

Caritas Luxembourg's director general Marc Crochet says when the financial loss was discovered, Caritas had just 28 million euros in the account.

That is about half the money we need in the year to function, he explains.

"And the 28 million euros that were there were not our money either. That was about 25 million that belonged to the Luxembourg state and other donors."

He discovered 33 million of the missing 61 million euros were in credit and loans taken out in Caritas Luxembourg's name.

"The only thing I knew for sure was that someone was about to rob us" he says.

Once he saw how the money had been stolen however, Crochet says he had a good idea as to who the thief was.

"And I could actually just connect the dots and say: I know that person."

The public prosecutor's office has since said a person was arrested after turning themselves in for the theft on 22 July.

Accounting form PwC Luxembourg will be conducting investigations to uncover the facts.

At the same time, the crisis committee will make the necessary decisions "to restore the confidence of donors, the general public and public authorities in the entities" Caritas Luxembourg says.

Outrage expressed

Government officials are furious about the theft. A national debate rages about overseeing charities receiving state funds.

When he heard about the lost funds, Prime Minister Luc Frieden said Caritas would not receive "a single euro" more amid the scandal.

The Catholic charity with the big international name had been receiving state money to help provide services for the country's homeless and refugees.

Another government minister said the "sickening" theft will impact "the poorest people in Luxembourg and in the world".

Theft casts big shadow

The charity's announcement could hardly have come at a worse time.

The scandal emerged weeks before a scheduled papal visit to the 700,000-citizen Catholic-majority country.

Francis is due to make a daylong visit to Luxembourg on 26 September, meeting the prime minister, head of state Grand Duke Henri, the Catholic community and Jean-Claude Hollerich who serves as the synod on synodality's general rapporteur.

Auditing underway

While continuing to serve Luxembourg's people in need, Caritas is negotiating with banks regarding its short-term financial needs and cooperating with the judicial authorities.

An auditing firm has volunteered to assess Caritas' financial procedures "and to identify and change any technical and/or human shortcomings" a spokesperson says.

"These findings will undoubtedly shed light on how a misappropriation of funds on this scale, and over a period of nearly six months, could have been possible."

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• Pillar

Whether that image of the pontiff was fair or not, it stuck, so much so that it featured in the opening paragraphs of many papal obituaries.

Today, one sometimes wonders why Francis, in equal and opposite fashion, hasn't yet been termed by his own critics the "Lear Pope," meaning a leader who doesn't hesitate to act - who, in fact, can come off as perhaps a bit rash or impetuous, but never indecisive.

Francis's latest such "Lear moment" came Tuesday, when the Vatican announced that he has essentially placed the global Catholic charity Caritas into receivership.

He fired its entire leadership team and appointed his own interim administrator, Italian organisational consultant Pier Francesco Pinelli, who will run things ahead of the next General Assembly of Caritas set for May 2023.

The changes came as a surprise even to most Caritas personnel, who were gathered in Rome for their first in-person meeting since the Covid pandemic broke out in 2019.

A press briefing with Caritas leaders from various parts of the world was staged Tuesday morning with no mention of the impending papal decree, which came out just as the briefing was wrapping up.

Caritas, whose headquarters are in the Vatican, is a federation of Catholic charitable organisations that operate in more than 200 countries.

In 2020 it reported income of $5.2 million and expenses of $4.5 million, though that's just the Rome budget and does not reflect income and expenses for its various members.

No real explanation was given for the abrupt papal take-over, other than a sort of via negativa - that is to say, we know what the reasons weren't, as a Vatican statement said there was no evidence of financial or sexual impropriety.

(It's telling about the Catholic Church in 2022 that if someone gets fired, you have to say out loud that it wasn't because of money or sex - because if you don't, everyone will assume one of those two things had to be the reason.)

Beyond excluding those two factors, the statement simply said that an internal review had revealed "real deficiencies" in management, leading to damage to "team-spirit and staff morale."

Many observers tend to believe that the problems, at least in part, centred around the ousted Secretary General of Caritas, meaning its day-to-day CEO, an Indian layman with French citizenship named Aloysius John (Pictured).

John came to power in 2019 after other candidates for the top job dropped out, and rumours suggest charges of heavy-handed leadership and suspect management on his watch.

In one possible sign of discontent, Vatican News, the official news platform of the Vatican, reported Tuesday that when Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle read the decree aloud to Caritas members, it was greeted with applause.

Speaking of Tagle, his reputation likely will take something of a hit in the wake of the upheaval. Continue reading

Caritas Jerusalem is preparing to respond to the urgent needs of the thousands injured and the thousands of people forced to leave their homes either because they were destroyed or because they tried to save their lives.

"The bombings are extremely heavy. The people of Gaza have lived through many wars over many years, but everyone agrees that this time it is completely different. They are trapped in this densely populated strip of land at the mercy of intense air bombardment with nowhere to flee for safety." Read more

The new statutes had been in effect since May 2019 after a decree from the Vatican Secretariat of State approved changes made by the general assembly of Caritas.

Pope Francis approved the amended statutes and internal rules for Caritas Internationalis in a Jan. 13 meeting with Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin. The meeting considered "the need to redefine the purpose and order of Caritas Internationalis," according to the Vatican statement. Read more