‘So powerful’: Jonathan Roumie on sponsoring African children through Catholic charity (2025)

December 23, 2024Catholic News AgencyNews Briefs0Print

‘So powerful’: Jonathan Roumie on sponsoring African children through Catholic charity (2)

CNA Staff, Dec 23, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).

In 2023, Catholic actor Jonathan Roumie partnered with Unbound, a Catholic child-sponsorship charity, to support the organization’s 1 millionth child — a little girl named Emelyne who lives in poverty in Rwanda.

One year later, after speaking virtually and exchanging letters, the two met in person.

“Meeting Emelyne was — it’s difficult to put into words. You have a concept going into these encounters, from the photos from the letters — and then to see her in person,” Roumie said in a video shared by Unbound.

‘So powerful’: Jonathan Roumie on sponsoring African children through Catholic charity (3)

Roumie, best known for his role portraying Jesus in the hit series “The Chosen,” recently traveled to Rwanda and Tanzania to meet Emelyne as well as Ibrahimu, whom Roumie has been sponsoring since 2019.

Unbound was founded in 1981 by Catholics as an agency focused on putting resources directly in the hands of the world’s poor. Today it uses a network of thousands of sponsors to deliver personalized support to children, elders, and their families living in poverty in Latin America, Asia, and Africa.

When Roumie was searching for a charity to start working with, the main component he was trying to find was “something that spoke to my heart for kids and the development of children and of making sure that they grew up with resources and the ability to succeed,” he told CNA in an interview.

‘So powerful’: Jonathan Roumie on sponsoring African children through Catholic charity (4)

He called his partnership with Unbound “a wonderful, beautiful, life-giving, impactful, relationship on me, just as much as the child I’d say.”

The actor admitted that while growing up fairly sheltered in suburban New York he had no idea about the poverty people experience around the world. He got his first glimpse of it 25 years ago when he first visited Senegal.

Roumie called his recent trip to Rwanda and Tanzania “truly powerful” as he was able to witness firsthand the impact his sponsorship has had on these children, their families, and the community.

“To be able to visit these children that I’ve been connected to through sponsorship and to see exactly how my resources and resources for everyone there who’s being sponsored … are being stewarded and to what level of impact they’re having — to see that actually come alive and see what the water treatment programs they have set up are, how they manage their resources as a community, how they’re able to then build like a savings account and being able to steward those savings toward individual needs within the community — seeing that in person lived out was just so fruitful and it was so powerful for me,” he said.

‘So powerful’: Jonathan Roumie on sponsoring African children through Catholic charity (5)

He added that meeting the parents of the children, many of whom are being raised by single mothers, was also a very special part of his trip.

“Meeting those moms, [and] in the rare cases the dads, they are just so blown away that they are able to get this kind of help because as you’re driving, sometimes several hours through the jungles and through these minimally developed infrastructures, you’re seeing droves and droves of people living tribally and oftentimes just in shacks and there’s garbage everywhere,” he said.

“Then when you can get to some of these communities that have this system in place, where they’re able to be helped, it’s like a world of difference … and you can just sense their gratitude and the joy that they have within them to God for allowing them to be part of something that allows them to flourish in a way that they didn’t anticipate that they could.”

While in Africa, Roumie was personally impacted by seeing how his contributions are able to help people “move beyond” their circumstances.

“It’s literally being Christ to these people by giving them what you have so that they can live a better life,” he said.

He pointed out the importance of giving back, especially as Catholics, because “it’s what Jesus mandated us to do as followers of him.”

“By doing so you have the opportunity not only to be Christ to other people in the world but to encounter Christ in the world through poverty, through these different people,” he explained. “It was Mother Teresa that talked about meeting Jesus in her service towards the poorest of the poor. And every opportunity to serve is an opportunity to do just that.”

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Pope Francis signs peace declaration on ‘Human Fraternity’ with Grand Imam

February 4, 2019CNA Daily News12

‘So powerful’: Jonathan Roumie on sponsoring African children through Catholic charity (8)

Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Feb 4, 2019 / 05:08 pm (CNA).- Catholics, Muslims and all who believe in God must work together to build a culture of love, peace and human fraternity, Pope Francis said in a joint statement he signed with Ahmed el-Tayeb, Grand Imam of al-Azhar, during an interreligious meeting in Abu Dhabi.

The document, entitled “A Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together,” invited “all persons who have faith in God and faith in human fraternity to unite and work together so that it may serve as a guide for future generations to advance a culture of mutual respect in the awareness of the great divine grace that makes all human beings brothers and sisters.”

The signing took place Feb. 4 during Pope Francis’ visit to Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, a trip intended to promote interreligious dialogue and give support to the country’s Christian minority. Francis is the first Pope ever to visit the Arabian peninsula.

The document discussed the importance of religion in building a peaceful and free society and the challenges of an increasingly secular world. It condemned all practices and policies detrimental to human life and freedom.

Within a paragraph about human freedom, the document states that religious plurality is willed by God. “The pluralism and the diversity of religions, colour, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings,” the document states. “This divine wisdom is the source from which the right to freedom of belief and the freedom to be different derives. Therefore, the fact that people are forced to adhere to a certain religion or culture must be rejected, as too the imposition of a cultural way of life that others do not accept.”

The Catholic Church holds that Catholicism is the one true religion.

This statement must be read in the proper context and perspective, said Dr. Chad Pecknold, associate professor of systematic theology at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

“In sensitive inter-religious contexts, it is fitting for the Holy See to acknowledge that despite serious theological disagreements, Catholics and Muslims have much in common, such as a common belief that human beings are ‘willed by God in his wisdom,’” Pecknold told CNA.

“The idea that God wills the diversity of color, sex, race and language is easily understood, but some may find it puzzling to hear the Vicar of Christ talk about God willing the diversity of religions,” he noted. “It is puzzling, and potentially problematic, but in the context of the document, the Holy Father is clearly referring not to the evil of many false religions, but positively refers to the diversity of religions only in the sense that they are evidence of our natural desire to know God.”

“God wills that all men come to know Him through the free choice of their will, and so it follows that a diversity of religions can be spoken about as permissively willed by God without denying the supernatural good of one true religion,” he added. In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 841 speaks about the Church’s relationship with the Muslims: “The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind’s judge on the last day.”

Among other things, the document also condemned terrorism. It called for equal rights and access to education for women, called on believers to care for the poor and vulnerable, and called on world leaders “to work strenuously to spread the culture of tolerance and of living together in peace; to intervene at the earliest opportunity to stop the shedding of innocent blood and bring an end to wars, conflicts, environmental decay and the moral and cultural decline that the world is presently experiencing.”

As Grand Imam of al-Azhar, Tayeb holds one of the most prominent titles in Sunni Islam, and is head of the the al-Azhar Mosque and al-Azhar University in Egypt.

Tayeb is considered a tolerant and moderate Muslim leader, and has rejected connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and condemned ISIS. He also allowed a woman to remain at al-Azhar University after she was facing expulsion for allegedly hugging a male student. However, he has also said he believes that apostasy from Islam is punishable by death.

In the interreligious meeting, Pope Francis said that people of different religions must work to build the future together “or there will not be a future.”

“The time has come when religions should more actively exert themselves, with courage and audacity, and without pretense, to help the human family deepen the capacity for reconciliation, the vision of hope and the concrete paths of peace,” he said.

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‘So powerful’: Jonathan Roumie on sponsoring African children through Catholic charity (2025)
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