Humanitarianism of the Roman Catholic Church: contested spaces of religion in a secular landscape

The interlink between forced displacement and religion has fostered intersectional analyses of religious-secular dichotomies in migration policies and practices; scholars of faith-based humanitarianism, civil society networks, and of discursive framing call for further research on the ontologies and praxes negotiated between religious and secular political actors. This paper therefore investigates how religious organisations operate within contested spaces of secularized humanitarianism. Religious aid organisations are here analyzed against the backdrop of secular frameworks underpinning humanitarian assistance to forced migrants. To probe into these questions, the paper presents findings from Catholic aid organisations engaged with secular humanitarian actors. Whilst other disciplines have traditionally studied the history, legality and theologies underpinning the Holy See’s relations with secular powers, research on faith-based humanitarianism and forced migration overlooked policy analyses of the Church vis-à-vis its NGOs and secular political institutions. Informed by an iterative qualitative methodology based on case studies, new data was collected through key informant interviews with officials of the Holy See, Catholic NGOs, diplomats, and humanitarian practitioners. With its intersectional analysis of Catholic NGO networks, this paper contributes to studies of religious actors in politics; it equally opens to further opportunities for scholars interested in migration policies through the lenses of secular-religious cleavages.