AN ‘INSPIRING’ DAY

Sister Betsy Van Deusen, CCUSA board have meeting with Pope Leo XIV

SISTER BETSY VAN DEUSEN, CSJ, holds a framed photo of her meeting with Pope Leo XIV that she keeps in her office at the Pastoral Center in Albany. (Emily Benson photo)

Last month, the board of directors and senior staff of Catholic Charities USA (CCUSA) met in a private audience with Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican. 

Among the group of 19 CCUSA directors was the Albany Diocese’s own Sister Betsy Van Deusen, CSJ, CEO of Catholic Charities of the Albany Diocese, who was elected to the Catholic Charities national board last June. 

Sister Betsy said that the entire experience in Rome was “incredibly inspiring.”

“It’s been extraordinarily inspiring,” she said of being on the CCUSA board. “The people are so committed, the leadership of CCUSA is just amazing. Kerry Robinson (CCUSA president and CEO), she’s just a remarkable leader, and the team is great. The folks and directors are so warm.”

The audience with Pope Leo took place on May 4, a few days into the CCUSA board of directors’ trip. The board meets four times a year, but the last time the board visited Italy together was six years ago.

“He’s very calm, very serene, very warm,” Sister Betsy said of Pope Leo. “He looked right in my eyes and it was very lovely.”

After a handshake, Sister Betsy took the opportunity to thank the Holy Father for sending Bishop Mark O’Connell to the Albany Diocese. In October 2025, Pope Leo accepted the resignation of former Albany Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger and announced Bishop Mark as his successor, who was serving as an archbishop for the Archdiocese of Boston.

“I’m grateful that he’s the person who is here,” Sister Betsy told The Evangelist. “With his background — he was in Boston, in canon law before the sex abuse broke — he’s been in it from the very beginning.”

The meeting concluded with an apostolic blessing from Pope Leo for all Catholic Charities agencies in CCUSA’s network.

“Your work with the less fortunate continues to provide a privileged opportunity to share the joy of the Resurrection, and I thank you for this sincere witness of faith,” Pope Leo said in his address to the board. “The practical assistance that you and your partner agencies offer the disadvantaged allows them to experience God’s love through you, and open a path for them to enter into a lasting relationship with God. At the same time, it enables you to come into contact with the flesh of Christ by seeking to see and serve him in our brothers and sisters. In this way, your works of charity become a mutual encounter with the Lord who is present among us.”

Over the course of the trip, the CCUSA board met with various Vatican offices, including Caritas Internationalis, the worldwide federation of Catholic social service organizations, of which CCUSA is a member.

Sister Betsy said the board’s time together left the group’s relationships “enlivened and increased.”

“We broke bread together every day, we went to Mass every day, we had different opportunities to get to know one another at different levels,” she said.

Sister Betsy’s sister, Ruth Van Deusen, who traveled with her to Rome, also noted how enriching the group was.

“My sister commented that every night we sat with different people, and every night the conversations were just so rich and so full about everything,” she said. “Politics and environment and church and their families. It was just really, really warm.”