“The fruit of faith is love, the fruit of love is service, and the fruit of service is peace.”
—St. Teresa of Calcutta
—St. Teresa of Calcutta
Our Mission
Identify, develop, support, and implement approaches to humanitarian service which are fully informed by and faithful to the teachings and best traditions of the Catholic Church.
Your financial support serves the poor and disenfranchised worldwide.
Make a GiftWhat We Do
The Institute for Catholic Humanitarian Service, fully engaged in the field and on the ground, serves the marginalized and persecuted worldwide with training, project assistance, advocacy, and awareness.
In following an authentically Catholic approach to humanitarian service as a vocation, ICHS places the human person in need at the core of every effort and works to provide effective alternatives to the prevailing institutional aid paradigm.
Although based at Franciscan University of Steubenville, ICHS operates globally, with an initial 3–5-year focus on marginalized communities in Africa, the Middle East, select conflict zones, and the Ohio River Valley and Western Pennsylvania, supported by partnerships with universities in Iraq and Nigeria.
Placing a renewed focus on proven Catholic approaches to direct work among the marginalized, ICHS reminds an increasingly secular world of the vital remaining place for service based in faith as a true vocation.
Management
Director
Stephen M. Rasche, JD
Stephen M Rasche, JD is a recognized international expert on displacement and persecution of religious minorities. He serves as a faculty member in the department of Theology at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, directing the Institute for Catholic Humanitarian Service. He is also a Senior Fellow for International Policy at the Religious Freedom Institute in Washington D.C., a contributing scholar at the Kukah Centre in Abuja, Nigeria, and a lay advisor with the National Catholic Secretariat in Nigeria working in multiple dioceses throughout the country. In Iraq he continues to serve as counsel to the Archdiocese of Erbil and as senior advisor to the Catholic University in Erbil.
In 2014, after more than 20 years in international project development, he left commercial practice and began life as a full-time lay missionary serving within the Catholic Church. In his work within the Church in Iraq and, more recently, in Nigeria, Rasche has held central roles in the successful implementation of over $50 million in aid and service programs.
He has testified in front of US Congress, UK House of Lords, the EU Parliament, and Vatican conferences as expert witness on the Iraq war and displaced religious minorities. In 2019 he served as an official representative to the Vatican Dicastery of Refugees and Migrants in drafting the Papal Guidelines for Internally Displaced Persons.
He is the author of numerous published articles on religious minorities and conflicts in the Middle East and Africa and has been interviewed in leading media outlets worldwide. His photographs and documentary film-works from within the displaced communities in Iraq and Nigeria have been shown internationally and he is the author of the critically acclaimed book The Disappearing People: The Tragic Fate of Christians in the Middle East.
Rasche holds a B.A. in International Relations from Boston University and a J.D. from the University of San Diego.
Contact
Stephen M. Rasche, JD
Faculty Fellow
Director, Institute for Catholic Humanitarian Service
Franciscan University of Steubenville