IN THE BEGINNING    In 1945, Catherine Schaefer, Executive Director of the future US Bishops’ Office of UN Affairs, the predecessor of the International Catholic Organizations Information Center in New York, was a Catholic consultant at the UN Conference in San Francisco. As such, Schaefer was instrumental in the composition of Article 71 of the UN Charter, which recognized the essential role of United Nations NGOs. In addition to her information/liaison role for the American hierarchy, she and her staff also functioned as WUCWO’s NGO representatives; served as the “base” for ICO representatives in New York; and provided background and information to assist other Catholic NGOs in their UN consultative status, e.g., alerting them when items of special concern to the Church were under discussion. With their unique, on-site expertise, assistance was often provided to NGOs in their preparation of oral or written statements to be submitted UN bodies. Regular bi-weekly meetings for Catholic NGOs were hosted to keep up with issues being discussed and debated at the UN.

PERIOD OF UNCERTAINTY    When the USCC Office of UN Affairs was closed on June 30, 1972, because of the financial constraints of the Bishops’ Conference in Washington, DC, the seventeen Catholic NGOs with ECOSOC status stationed in New York at the time determined to continue to meet and maintain the ICO lounge in the Holy Family building, which had been part of the Office of UN Affairs suite, as their nexus. The ICO representatives met under the chairmanship of the Reverend Hugh Morley, OFM Cap of ICUP.

REBIRTH     A reincarnation of sorts of the Office of UN Affairs, now under the patronage of the Conference of International Catholic Organizations (CICO), a canonical entity recognized by the Pontifical Council for the Laity, and therefore, the Holy See’s Secretariat of State, was opened in 1977 with Father Morley as its first Executive Director. As early as 1973, the year following the closing of the Office of UN Affairs, the General Assembly of the CICO, meeting inFribourg,Switzerland, recognizing the essential role of an information center inNew York, had supported the establishment of such a center, using its information center inGeneva as the model. It also agreed to fund a portion of the ICOIC’s annual budget.

A NEW ERA    After Father Morley’s death in 1978, five directors succeeded to the position of Executive Director. Father Bernard Hrico (1977-81) and Lynne Mannino (1982-88) continued the Schaefer/Zizzamia model of working actively with other Catholic NGOs at the UN, regularly attending sessions of UN bodies and participating in non-governmental organizations meetings. Sister Janet Davis Richardson, CSJP (1988-90), along with her NGO work on human rights, initiated and began the securing of funds for the well-regarded video, “Communion of Nations,” a film documenting the contributions of Catholic NGOs to the work of the UN since its inception, and actually producing it with the Reverend George Torok of Hallel Publications. Sister Eileen FitzMaurice, CND, (1990-95) worked to finish the video, held its première, and presented a copy to Pope John Paul II. FitzMaurice, along with Sister Dorothy Farley, OP (1995-2008), helped to mentor a new and groundbreaking phenomenon at the United Nations at the end of the twentieth century: the accreditation and activities of Catholic religious congregations of men and women as both DPI and ECOSOC accredited NGOs at UN Headquarters.

THE FUTURE In 2009, as an integral part of the Secretariat of State’s Forum for Catholic-Inspired NGOs, the New York Catholic Information Center is strategically placed to fulfill one of the Forum’s principal goals, to serve all Catholic NGOs at UN headquarters as a center for consultation on international issues, and for the exchange of ideas and experiences, a function it has maintained for more than six decades.

JOSEPH S. ROSSI, SJ  Professor of American Catholic Life and Thought, Loyola University Maryland and author of American Catholics and the Formation of the United Nations and Uncharted Territory: The American Catholic Church at the UN, 1946-1972 and Research Scholar-in-Residence at the ICO Center New York.