STEUBENVILLE, OHIO—The international relief organization Mary’s Meals received the Poverello Medal, Franciscan University of Steubenville’s highest non-academic award, at a September 20 ceremony held at the University.

Mary’s Meals feeds one million hungry children each school day in 12 countries across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America. The organization relies on an army of volunteers so that 93 percent of all donations are spent directly on its charitable activities.

The founder of Mary’s Meals, Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow, received the Poverello Medal on behalf of Mary’s Meals from Franciscan University President Father Sean O. Sheridan, TOR.

Father Sheridan noted that the medal was given to Mary’s Meals during a year in which the University joins Pope Francis to celebrate an Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy. He praised Magnus, his brother Fergus, and their parents for turning faith into actions of mercy to meet real human needs.

“Today, more than one million children who would otherwise go hungry have food in their bellies and a place in a classroom because one family responded with heroic generosity when they just as easily could have looked away. That family saw the dignity of those suffering—they saw the face of Christ and his mother when they looked at the hungry—and they tried to meet those needs as best as they could. God then took their best efforts and multiplied them beyond all measure,” said Father Sheridan.

“Mary’s Meals is the fruit of prayer. Of that, I have no doubt,” MacFarlane-Barrow said, explaining how his parents turned a family guesthouse into a house of prayer after a family pilgrimage to Bosnia-Herzegovina, in 1983. The resulting graces, he said, set the stage for the charitable work that became Mary’s Meals.

“This is mercy in action; it’s not just a feeling; it helps open our hearts to love those people who need our help,” he said, describing how children survive near indescribable poverty because there is a nutritious meal waiting for them at a village school.

MacFarlane-Barrow told of one woman who, as an orphan in Malawi, was among the first 200 children fed by Mary’s Meals in that country in 2002. Today, she is studying finance and hopes to improve conditions in her country.

MacFarlane-Barrow said he is often asked if Mary’s Meals is named after his mother or his wife. “And then I tell them it’s named after Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and how she was a refugee and had to flee persecution.”

He called the award personally meaningful to him because as a boy he was inspired “to be a hero” like St. Francis of Assisi and had selected Francis as his confirmation saint name.

Also speaking at the ceremony was Theresa Danaher, a 1980 graduate of Franciscan University and the principal of Bishop John King Mussio Elementary and Junior High School in Steubenville. Danaher told how Bishop Mussio students raised enough money this year to open their own kitchen at St. Dominic’s School in Liberia, Africa, which they named “Cynthia’s Kitchen” after Cynthia Phillipson, a classmate who fundraised for Mary’s Meals in 2014 and passed away unexpectedly last fall.

Two Mary’s Meals kitchens in Malawi—St. Francis and St. Clare Kitchens—are sponsored by a Franciscan University club founded in 2010 by theology professor Dr. Andrew Minto. For one kitchen alone, the Franciscan students raise over $12,000 annually, which includes donations collected by students at the University’s study-abroad program in Austria.

The Poverello Medal, cast in steel to signify simplicity and poverty, acknowledges organizations and individuals who follow in the footsteps of St. Francis of Assisi, “Il Poverello” (the little poor man), through strong Christian character, practical charity, and service to the poor. It was first awarded in 1949 to the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous.