Retired Jesuit's modesty belies efforts on behalf of world's refugees

Published: 2003-12-01

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- It shouldn't have come as a surprise to those gathered to honor Jesuit Father Frank Moan at the National Migration Conference in Washington this summer that he was a no-show. A modest man, the founder of Jesuit Refugee Service USA and "Refugee Voices," an educational radio program about refugee life, can be engaged in conversation for almost a full hour before mentioning his trip to Bosnia-Herzegovina in the early 1990s at the height of sniper activity in Sarajevo. "That was probably the most daring thing I ever did, because I had to go in by a U.N. plane and I couldn't go in without a flak jacket and helmet," said the 76-year-old priest. "At that time, even though you landed supposedly in a safe place," he added, "when the plane landed, we were told we had to run from the plane to the hangar." It was for this work in Bosnia, and for his efforts on behalf of refugees in Cambodia, the Philippines, El Salvador, Jordan, Israel and around the globe that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Catholic Legal Immigration Network honored Father Moan.

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