Career foreign service officer named to head church migration office

Published: 2007-08-03

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- A former ambassador to countries in Africa, Eastern Europe and the Middle East has been named director of Migration and Refugee Services for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Johnny Young, a career foreign service officer with the U.S. State Department who most recently was ambassador to Slovenia from 2001 to 2004, will replace Mark Franken, who retired from the USCCB in June after a career of working with Catholic refugee and immigrant agencies. Young's appointment was announced in an Aug. 2 press release in which Msgr. David Malloy, general secretary of the USCCB, cited his experience in dealing with refugees. "Because of his work in Africa, especially with refugees in Sierra Leone, and in Slovenia, where he worked against the scourge of human trafficking, Johnny Young has profound knowledge of the depths of these problems," said Msgr. Malloy. Young, a native of Savannah, Ga., grew up in Philadelphia and graduated from Temple University there before joining the State Department's foreign service in 1967 as a budget and fiscal officer in Madagascar.

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