Catholic development organizations: between the politics of social movements and the activism of faith in action

Abstract

The paper presents an analysis of the relations established between the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD), Catholic donors in the dioceses of England and Wales, and the street children movement in Brazil in the 1990s. The aim is to show that the particularity of the Catholic development chain is not expressed in the supposed existence of a bounded moral community, as suggested by Morse and McNamara (2008), but in the kinds of knowledge, techniques and language mobilized at every relation: bureaucratic knowledge with institutional donors and the Catholic doctrine among donors. Relations within the Catholic Development chain enable the practice of specific and unrelated politics, those of social movements in Brazil and of Catholic activists in the UK.

Keywords
international development; Catholic Church; faith-based organizations