One Visit to a Jamaican Orphanage Changed Everything

Michele Sagarino is President of Cross Catholic Outreach, one of the largest Catholic relief and development organizations in the United States. For more than two decades, she has traveled extensively through some of the world’s poorest communities, working alongside bishops, priests, religious sisters, and local Catholic leaders to address poverty through faith-based development, disaster relief, education, housing, clean water initiatives, and spiritual formation.

In this conversation, she reflects on the experiences that shaped her understanding of charity, beginning with a transformative mission trip to Jamaica that exposed the gap between money given in the name of helping the poor and the reality faced by vulnerable communities. She explains why some charitable efforts fail while others succeed and how Catholic principles such as subsidiarity and solidarity guide Cross Catholic Outreach’s work.

Sagarino also discusses her visits to the Vatican, her meetings with Pope Leo XIV and senior Church officials, and Cross Catholic Outreach’s unique relationship with the Holy See. The conversation explores the theological relationship between trust and charity, the role of personal generosity in an age of institutional skepticism, and whether supporting international aid organizations is compatible with Christ’s command to love one’s neighbor.

Guest bio:

Michele Sagarino is President of Cross Catholic Outreach, a Catholic relief and development organization serving vulnerable communities in more than 30 countries. She has spent over twenty years working with Catholic missionaries, dioceses, and local Church leaders to support programs focused on clean water, housing, education, healthcare, disaster relief, and integral human development.