Since Kelly Ryan began working as the president of Jesuit Refugee Service/USA (JRS/USA) in May, she has drawn on her three decades of experience as a diplomat, attorney and policy maker working in human rights, migration and refugee issues.
In 2023, Jesuit Refugee Service, which is headquartered in Rome, served more than 1.2 million refugees and other forcibly displaced people in 58 countries around the world, providing a range of outreach including educational and livelihood programs, emergency assistance, health care, psychological and social support, advocacy, pastoral care and promoting reconciliation.
While leading JRS/USA in Washington, D.C., where she grew up as the oldest of five children in a Catholic family, Ryan has also drawn on lessons learned at home and from her Catholic elementary, high school and law school education.
When asked about the foundation of her Catholic faith that she learned from her parents, the late Robert and Edith Ryan, she said their example taught her “everything… Our family was just full of love.” Her father worked as an attorney, a profession she would later pursue, graduating from the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, which both of her parents had attended. Their family’s home parish was the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Washington, which Ryan continues to attend. She said her parents taught their children to “take care of one another.”
That philosophy of life aligns with the mission of Jesuit Refugee Service, which according to its website, “seeks to accompany, serve and advocate the cause of refugees and other forcibly displaced people, that they may heal, learn and determine their own future.”
Kelly Ryan attended the first and second grade at Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Bethesda, then attended Blessed Sacrament School from the third through eighth grade. As a high school student at Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School in Washington, Ryan was inspired by her religion teacher, Marian Canney, who taught there for 45 years and who died in 2019 at the age of 98.
“She was a beautiful, beautiful teacher of religion,” Ryan said, adding, “She taught human dignity in a beautiful way.”
Another mentor for her at Georgetown Visitation was Sister Claire Joseph O’Neill, who was the school infirmarian and moderator of the Christian Action Society, a student group that took part in spiritual activities and service outreach.
“I was the president, the head of the Christian Action Society” at Visitation, Ryan said, noting that in her new role leading Jesuit Refugee Service/USA, “this is my second role as a president.”
Visitation Sister Claire Joseph showed compassion to her former student after learning of the death of Ryan’s mother.
“My mom died in 1994, it was terrible. I was already graduated,” Ryan said. “She (Sister Claire Joseph) got somebody to drive her to my house. She was a cloistered nun. She was at my house like two hours after my mom was dead, holding my hand. It was so beautiful… I don’t know how long she stayed. Finally she looked at me and said, ‘Kelly, I think I need a ride back.’ So I drove her back to Visitation on the night my mom died. It was very beautiful. She loved me, I loved her.”
Sister Claire Joseph died in 1998 at the age of 84.
After graduating from Georgetown Visitation, Kelly Ryan earned a bachelor’s degree from Tulane University in New Orleans, a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center, and a master’s degree in law at the University of Cambridge in England, where she studied human rights law.
When Ryan decided to be a lawyer, she resolved to work in human rights and humanitarian law. “I thought it was the most exciting area of law, and so that’s what I did… It’s really challenging. It’s very cutting edge, and it’s an area where you have a huge opportunity to affect people,” she said, adding, “I worked very hard on complicated issues of law, advancing them, so I worked on every complicated refugee or asylum issue for the past 20 years.”
Kelly Ryan is a two-time U.S. presidential political appointee. President George W. Bush appointed her as a deputy assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau for Population, Refugees and Migration, a role she held from 2002 to 2009. President Barack Obama appointed her as the acting deputy assistant secretary for immigration and border security in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, where she worked form 2010 t0 2013.
During her professional career, Ryan worked extensively with faith-based organizations, including the International Catholic Migration Commission, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and the Holy See.
Ryan was interviewed by the Catholic Standard on World Refugee Day – an annual commemoration on June 20 designated by the United Nations to recognize refugees around the world, who now, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, number 43.4 million people among the world’s estimated 117 million forcibly displaced people. The U.N. defines refugees as people forced to flee their own country and seek safety in another country, because they fear persecution based on who they are or what they believe, or because of armed conflict, violence or public disorder.
The new head of JRS/USA noted that her mentor over the years had been Jesuit Father Richard Ryscavage, a noted advocate for migrants and refugees who had led that agency and also taught at The Catholic University of America and Georgetown University. Ryan joined the priest in teaching a class in integral economic development ethics at Catholic University. He died in 2019. Ryan noted that Father Ryscavage was a sociologist who challenged his peers to recognize the role of religion and faith in people’s lives, and he also stressed the importance of accompanying migrants and refugees.
“People don’t really understand different models of helping refugees, so accompanying them, not just talking at them or talking for them, not just handing them cash, but accompanying them in their journey” is crucial, Ryan said, noting that is something that Jesuit Father Pedro Arrupe, then the superior general of the Society of Jesus, underscored when he founded Jesuit Refugee Service in 1980.
As the new president of Jesuit Refugee Service/USA, Kelly Ryan succeeds Joan Rosenhauer, who served in that role for the past six years and was the first woman to lead JRS/USA. Rosenhauer had earlier served as an executive vice president of Catholic Relief Services and at the Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. As the president of JRS/USA, Rosenhauer established a border program that provides mental health and psychological and social support, legal advice, and a volunteer accompaniment network for newcomers to the United States.
Ryan noted how Pope Francis has emphasized accompanying migrants and refugees. A few months after he became pope in 2013, his first trip outside Rome was to the small island of Lampedusa, Italy, which had become a safe haven for migrants making the perilous journey in crowded boats across the Mediterranean. The year before, an estimated 500 migrants were reported dead or missing after attempting that journey.
“These brothers and sisters of ours were trying to escape difficult situations to find some serenity and peace; they were looking for a better place for themselves and their families, but instead they found death,” Pope Francis said in his homily at the Mass, where the altar was made from a boat. The pope decried what he said had become a “globalization of indifference” to the plight of migrants and refugees.
The new head of JRS/USA said Pope Francis “has been really effective at humanizing the horror and the indignity, the non-dignified way migrants and refugees are treated… He calls (us) not to treat somebody as the other. In our culture right now, we’re always trying to put people in categories or define ourselves in categories,” Ryan said, adding, “We really are just brothers and sisters and we’re human, so we don’t need to always be putting people in boxes. Pope Francis would ask us not to do that, and he’s right.”
Ryan said Catholic social teaching principles have guided her life and work over the years. “I’m advancing solidarity, subsidiarity, the common good, all of those Catholic social thought ideas are how I live my life and are very important to me,” she said.
Jesuit Refugee Service is helping to transform the lives of refugees and other displaced people around the world every day, Ryan said. She noted how JRS/USA chaplains serve people at six Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers at the southern U.S. border.
“These (chaplains) are people that go every day to accompany refugees. They are in the detention center with them… They’re providing hope when people feel very discouraged,” she said. Describing the refugees’ harrowing journeys, Ryan added, “We work with shelters in El Paso, Texas, and migrants come, and they have been through terrible situations. Some of them have lost limbs, they have lost family members, they have been robbed, they have been sexually assaulted. They’ve come, because the situation they were in was dangerous, and they felt they had to leave.”
The JRS/USA leader noted, “We are a nation of immigrants and will remain a nation of immigrants, but we are facing challenges now.” Ryan said throughout the United States’ history, there have been cyclical periods of increased migration. “We’re in sort of a time of that cycle now where immigration is viewed sometimes as less of an opportunity and more of a threat.”
Ryan will be visiting JRS programs and partners at the U.S. southern border later in July.
Asked what can be done about what many are viewing as a crisis at that border, she said, “I believe very strongly personally and professionally, and the evidence shows it, that we need to focus on grassroots development and create conditions (in those home countries) where people don’t have to migrate.” Ryan added that many displaced people are fleeing dangerous situations in their countries. “I think we have to improve our asylum system, which has become mired down. I led the drafting of the asylum rule during the asylum reforms in 1994, we can certainly fix it again.”
In her work over the years, Ryan has met refugees who’ve endured tragedies and hardships, and also been inspired by their determination to build new lives for themselves and their families.
“I really think of the resilience of refugees, and how they’ve had to pick up and move to another country… I know so many people in the United States who’ve worked in very modest jobs, and their kids are graduating from college, because they came as refugees. So the ambition of refugees for their children is really inspiring to me,” Ryan said. “The generosity of host countries and host villages is very inspiring to me, and the refugees themselves are very inspiring… Some of the most amazing people I’ve met are refugees, who made heroic efforts at improving their lives and contributed to their communities, from all over the world.”
She pointed to the example of Immaculée Ilibagiza, a devout Catholic woman who survived the Rwandan genocide in 1994 but lost most of her family members, and after coming to the United States as a refugee, has devoted her life to promoting reconciliation, spreading a message of God’s love and forgiveness to audiences around the world. Ryan also noted how John Thon Majok, who as a refugee from Sudan was educated in a Jesuit Refugee Service program at a camp in Kenya, now is the director of the Refugee and Forced Displacement Initiative at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and serves on the JRS/USA board.
In addition to its programs serving refugees, JRS/USA also has programs to engage parishioners, students and community members in its advocacy efforts, including the Walk a Mile in My Shoes Program, where participants gain understanding of what refugees experience by walking through simulated border entry, shelter, food, water, medical, education and destination stations.
JRS/USA also has an online resource encouraging people to pray the rosary for refugees. A special patroness for the agency and for the refugees themselves is Madonna della Strada, Our Lady of the Way, based on a late medieval mural of Mary holding the infant Jesus that is in the Jesuits’ Church of the Gesú in Rome.
When Ryan applied to be the president of JRS/USA, in her packet she included a photograph of the “Angels Unawares” sculpture by artist Timothy Schmalz in the Welcome Plaza at Catholic University, that depicts 140 diverse migrants and refugees from different countries and historical eras crowded together on a boat as if seeking a safe harbor. Huddled among the refugees are Joseph, Mary and the baby Jesus on their flight into Egypt, and an angel’s wings are visible in the middle of the crowd.
“It’s obviously a reference to the fact that Jesus says how you treat the least of my brothers, you treat me, but also the idea of angels being amongst you, it’s just such a beautiful image, you never know who you’re going to meet and how exciting that is,” Ryan said, adding, “It’s an opportunity to really not just meet somebody, but accompany them on the journey. It’s such a great statue.”
As the new president of JRS/USA, Kelly Ryan hopes to expand its programs in order to continue to help as many refugees in possible. She is at home in the work and at home in Washington. “For me to have the honor of leading a faith-based organization, a Catholic organization whose entire structure and its mission are aligned with my faith, it’s like the greatest gift I could have gotten,” she said.
Related links:
https://www.jrsusa.org/news/beyond-borders-jesuit-refugee-service-usa-releases-2023-annual-report/
https://www.jrsusa.org/resource/walk-a-mile/
https://www.jrsusa.org/story/usa-pray-the-rosary-for-the-vulnerable/
