Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand
Media Release – For Immediate Release
1 September 2009

Head of Caritas Internationalis to visit New Zealand: Lesley-Anne Knight

The head of one of the world’s largest humanitarian networks is visiting Wellington, New Zealand on 18-19 September and available for media interviews.

Lesley-Anne Knight is Secretary General of Caritas Internationalis, a confederation of 164 Catholic aid, development and social justice agencies that includes Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand. She is the first woman to have held the position, based in Vatican City, Rome, and was appointed in June 2007.

Ms Knight has spoken out recently on the twin global crises of climate change and the financial meltdown, highlighting the disproportionate impact these are having on the poor, and asking for rich nations to change their ways.

On climate change, she says, “Industrialised countries have a moral obligation to change their habits and give poorer nations a chance to develop.” At the heart of the financial crisis, she says, was “a deficit of ethics. The ‘invisible hand’ of capitalism became the hand of a thief.”

A British citizen, born in Zimbabwe, Lesley-Anne Knight was International Director of the Catholic aid agency CAFOD (Caritas England and Wales). Her career in international development spans more than 25 years and she has lived and worked in Africa, Latin America and Europe. She speaks five languages.

Mrs Knight was educated at the Dominican Convent High School, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree in English, French, Logic and Metaphysics from the University of Cape Town in the Republic of South Africa, and post-graduate qualifications in French from the University of the Sorbonne in Paris, and Business Management from the University of London. She holds an honorary doctorate from St John’s University, New York.

During the 1980s, she worked in Guatemala, Nicaragua and Mexico in relief programmes for Central American refugees run by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and Oxfam. She joined CAFOD in 1992 as programme manager for Latin America and the Caribbean, responsible for CAFOD’s development programme in Brazil, Guyana, Central America and the Antilles.

In 1999 she became Emergencies Director of the UK-based charity HelpAge International, where she was responsible for humanitarian and emergency relief programmes in Northern Iraq, Kosovo/Macedonia, Mozambique and India. She returned to CAFOD in 2000 as Head of Programme and Partner Support and became International Director in 2004, the post she held before her appointment to Caritas Internationalis in the Vatican City.

While in New Zealand, she will meet representatives from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, development agencies, and the Catholic Church. She is also attending a regional meeting of Caritas Oceania organisations (including New Zealand) in Samoa on 22-25 September.

More on Lesley Anne Knight and recent speeches.

ENDS

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