In early May, Vatican News reported on a private audience Pope Leo XIV held with 56 steward families of The Papal Foundation who traveled to Rome for their annual pilgrimage. The Holy Father personally noted fruits of two of their previously funded restoration projects in churches he visited during the papal trip to Africa in April.
This spring, the group announced their record-setting impact — $15 million in allocated funds to more than 144 projects throughout 75 countries, supporting “infrastructure, programming, and humanitarian aid identified by the Vatican, with a focus on communities most in need,” the article stated.
It also noted that, since the organization’s founding in 1988, more than $270 million in grants, scholarships, and humanitarian aid has been distributed by The Papal Foundation to more than 2,700 projects selected first by Pope John Paul II and then by his successors.
The president of the Board of Trustees, Ward Fitzgerald, was quoted describing these projects as “signs of hope, responding to urgent needs and strengthening Catholic communities in developing nations.”
Fitzgerald is CEO and founder of the private equity firm ExCorde Capital and a recognized investment manager. He spoke with Aleteia about the foundation’s mission, the trajectory of his own spiritual journey, and the need the world has for Catholics to share the Sacred Heart of Jesus in word and action.
Check out the annual brochures to see projects listed by continent and country.
In more than 120 countries, over 400 churches and chapels have benefitted as well as 130 hospitals, 308 schools, 188 seminaries, and more than 450 rectories, convents, and monasteries. Technology grants have been awarded to 47 Catholic television and radio stations.
“We are called to pilgrim together”
Reflecting on his own faith journey, Fitzgerald said, “I have no idea why I was one of those chosen for this grace.” He was raised by Catholic parents, but the practice of the faith was not front-and-center. He says he “didn’t technically grow up in the faith or going to church” until the seventh grade.
He knew his father had “Catholic roots,” but it wasn’t until a new family moved in next door and a faith-filled friendship sprouted that fruits blossomed. With only sisters, Fitzgerald gravitated toward the new neighbors with their four sons, one of whom has been his best friend for now more than 50 years.
“The way their family interacted was a witness,” he admitted.
When his father asked where young Ward planned to go for junior high, the boy proposed attending Catholic school with his friend. Looking back, Fitzgerald feels it might have been the opportunity his dad was looking for.
“I think … he felt like a trigger was needed,” he said, clarifying that the decision process wasn’t something he ever discussed with his dad. However, the change of school prompted a transformation in the entire family.
Twenty-five years later, another moment reflected the surprising plans of providence. Fitzgerald met a priest who would launch his faith toward another transformative stage.
He reminisced about his life as a young man working in downtown Philadelphia, daily passing by St. Patrick’s Church on Rittenhouse Square: “Something just struck me one day, like the Spirit saying to me, ‘You know, you have 12 hours a day to work, seven hours a day to sleep; plenty of time to get to the gym and drink beer with your friends … but daily, where is your time for God?'”
It was “on a whim” that Fitzgerald decided he owed God at least 20 to 25 minutes a day for Mass. Becoming a daily communicant has since been a lifelong constant, although he noted that the practice ebbed and flowed during the years his children were very young.
The mentioned priest was newly ordained Father John Connor, LC, on his first assignment after ordination in 2000. The two developed a friendship and Fitzgerald attended spiritual and formative events Father Connor organized; eventually the priest became Fitzgerald’s spiritual director.
“He gave me a new perspective on how to think about my faith life … and from that point forward, my faith life had a different trajectory,” Fitzgerald relayed. The graces that have flowed from that, he added, have been “abundant.”
“Everything begins and ends in Christ”
What shifted? “To put it in simplest terms,” he continued, once again frank about simply sharing his own experience and confessing his own sinfulness, “we’re all broken … but the thing that most transformed” his thought process and its practical application to living the faith was another analysis of his time and priorities.
Father Connor helped his new friend to realize that, even though he was fitting in important devotions and a sacramental life, he was doing so as “compartments of a life — one of many ‘pillars’ alongside work, sleep, relationships, social life, and God.”
“’You have to understand,’” the priest told Fitzgerald, that life isn’t made up of these various pillars. “You have one foundation, and it’s Christ… Everything else is done in him,” whether it was working, sleeping, drinking beer with friends, or meeting girls … “everything begins and ends in Christ.”
This “completely changed my perspective about what it meant to be a Christian and a Catholic," Fitzgerald explained, " … as our Archbishop in Philadelphia has started saying, ‘we’re Catholic every day.’”
In his own words, Fitzgerald translated it: Your faith is "not a part of your life, it is who you are. It is what defines you. And I stopped being a businessman, and I started being a Catholic who happens to be a businessman …”
What he learned from Father Connor (who has served as General Director of the Legionaries of Christ since 2020) has been incorporated into all aspects of his life, and that circles back to the charitable endeavors of The Papal Foundation.
“It’s really about people first,” Fitzgerald said, and respecting the dignity of every human person. Returning to the words of John Paul II, he repeated, “We can’t be Catholic without showing the Sacred Heart of Jesus to the world. And that includes his love and mercy."
“There’s not enough love and there’s not enough mercy in the world,” he expressed.
The power of a papal ask and the witness of others
Fitzgerald explained how The Papal Foundation was started 40 years ago by the then-Archbishop of Philadelphia, Cardinal John Kroll, of Polish ancestry and a personal friend of St. Pope John Paul II.
Having received requests for assistance from many impoverished and emerging nations — with needs ranging from orphanages, medical clinics, and seminaries among others — the Holy Father looked to his friend for help. The Pope spoke with the archbishop about how the Vatican did not have the finances to give to every charitable need of the Church. He encouraged Cardinal Kroll to start The Papal Foundation with a group of ecclesiastical leaders from the United States and affluent families in his archdiocese.
Fitzgerald’s first contact with the organization came through personally being inspired and motivated by some of those founding families, persons who have chosen to use some of their resources for this “noble purpose.”
In a conversation with Deacon James Coffey, a personal friend and development officer for the Foundation, Fitzgerald committed to donate if he was ever in the position to do so, inspired by “people I aspire to be like in life.”
When business success did come his way, Fitzgerald became a “Steward of St. Peter” -- what the Foundation’s funding partners are called. The commitment as a steward goes beyond the financial, as their website states. Stewards commit to a “close bond that grows from a joint commitment to service. They gather throughout the year to renew and strengthen their relationships and connect with the work they are supporting.”
One of these gatherings is the annual post-Easter pilgrimage to Rome to “deliver their financial pledge and prayers of support to the Holy Father"; a winter gathering in the nation’s capital includes spiritual and cultural activities alongside the trustee’s semi-annual meeting. Mission trips are a third opportunity for these individuals to get to know projects funded by The Papal Foundation and see their impact “on individual lives and the future of the Church.”
The Catholic businessman was quick to clarify that he is not anyone special. “I just followed in the footsteps of these pioneers.” In 2020, Fitzgerald was nominated as the incoming lay director, with Timothy Cardinal Dolan being nominated for the ecclesiastical leadership role.
The Foundation enjoys large contingencies in Philadelphia, Denver, St. Louis, and Los Angeles among many other cities. Seeing a communal dynamic in charitable and faith-based organizations that parallels other evangelization initiatives, Fitzgerald claimed, “witness bears witness to more witness,” and believes that participation rallies among these clusters.
“I think the way these [Stewards of Saint Peter] get engaged and are drawn to give more is by visiting and exchanging with the beneficiaries,” Fitzgerald expressed. He expounded on various projects and places that are consistently visited, such as:
- In Chalco, Mexico, a school for trafficked children, and boys and girls “abandoned by their families, sold for a donkey, traded for sex or pornography.” A group of religious sisters rescue them from that life, help them to find healing by offering love and support, and train them in employable skills.
- In El Salvador, orphanages and medical clinics serving the most basic needs.
- In the Ukraine, where churches have set up medical clinics or orphanages in war torn villages.
“No better steward of capital” than the Catholic Church
Fitzgerald commented on the common experience, from high school students going on a mission trip to donors visiting sites where their financial gifts are sustaining the work, “even after many times participating, they are the ones who return far richer.”
“Catholics can’t be true Catholics if they don’t reveal the Sacred Heart to the world,” he continued, “specifically the poor. Because if they don’t know love and they don’t know mercy, they don’t know the Catholic Church. And shame on us as members of that Church if we’re not living that out.”
He asserted that there is no better steward of capital than the Catholic Church. Not that the Church hasn’t had her share of "bad apples" and "worse examples," but extending to every corner of the earth, “overwhelmingly, … you can find a priest or a sister, or a bishop or Catholic missionary, who’s caring for the poor, the needy, and the sick.”
Even in urban and affluent areas, Fitzgerald said, “What we are doing is what the saints of the Church were doing in their towns and villages 500 years ago.”
Forty years into the work begun by John Cardinal Kroll, encouraged by now-Saint Pope John Paul II, The Papal Foundation continues looking to the future, but always founded on the rock of Peter and the mission of the Catholic Church.
“There’s no doubt,” Fitzgerald commented, “that John Paul II reached out to Cardinal Kroll for a number of reasons, one of which is the affluence of the United States in general.”
Our country is set up, he said, “through tax incentives to be charitable; and because as a capitalistic nation, it doesn’t expect the government to be the social welfare for the poor. It expects the affluent to support the poor through monetary generosity and generous hearts.” He recognized that not all philanthropists have religious motivation but that religious charitable organizations are compelling and favored because of their efficiency and oversight.
“You have to have eyes and ears on the ground” for charitable giving to be efficient, and he reiterated that the Catholic Church has that infrastructure. He also noted that we have a responsibility to all the poor, within our own country and globally, but repeated, “How do you access the global poor?
“I would argue that no one government, no one charitable organization has boots on the ground in every corner of the world like the Catholic Church.”
