On September 8, after almost 25 years as executive director of Catholic Charities of New York, Monsignor Kevin Sullivan stepped back from that role and welcomed J. Antonio Fernandez as the organization’s new CEO. Having formerly led Catholic Charities in Chicago and most recently San Antonio, Fernandez spoke to The Good Newsroom after just two weeks in his new position.  

The Good Newsroom: How do faith-based organizations like Catholic Charities fit into New York’s social services? 

J. Antonio Fernández (JAF): It’s necessary. It’s a must. Running shelters, running food pantries, running case management, you may be able to provide for people’s basic human needs, like everybody needs to eat. Everybody needs to have a place to sleep. But if you don’t have God, and anyone wants to have God, why can’t we have that? Why can’t we have counseling that is faith-based? Because some people may say, I want to go to have counseling, or I want to talk to a priest. I think Catholic Charities has to have faith present in everything that we do in cases where people want to have that.

The Good Newsroom: What’s the biggest difference you’ve noticed between New York and San Antonio after two weeks?  

JAF: Each diocese that I worked with, in Chicago, then San Antonio, now New York, has different situations, so opportunities to work with. It is true in San Antonio that we work a lot with immigrants, like in New York. However, the immigrants who were coming to San Antonio were there for about a week, 10 days tops. We didn’t see 20,000 people, and we saw 375,000 people at Catholic Charities. Here in New York, the numbers are a lot less, but the case management services are more intense. How do we ensure that people in New York have a place to go, have access to a pro bono attorney, to help them get a job, so we can actually have them working legally in the city of New York? So maybe it’s longer case management than we had in Texas, but actually, it has to be a lot more intense. I think that is what we need to do in New York.

I’ve been blessed to go to five food pantries already, and I can see people at 6 o’clock in the morning lining up to get food. In a city like New York to have 1.2 million people who are living in food insecurity is completely unacceptable. So, I’m going to try my best to see how do we actually have more people getting food in the coming weeks and months. 

The Good Newsroom: What’s the most pressing issue facing Catholic Charities right now? 

JAF: I think housing clearly as you can see, for the people who are running for mayor, they are making the housing issue as one of the priorities. And then I think it’s resource management. I mean, how do we have people who need food and clothes and everything every day? How do we ensure that they actually become self-sufficient? That we actually help with everything? 

Monsignor Sullivan has done a great job at Catholic Charities to help a lot of people, but I really want to start focusing a little more on moms and babies, in the whole aspect of families from conception to death. 

The Good Newsroom: How do your MBA and counseling backgrounds shape your leadership style? 

JAF: It is necessary to ensure that we actually are effective as possible. But I think there’s a human component, and that’s why we can never lose track of going to see the sites. That is more about the psychological point of view. More about being there with the people and taking care of the people, with love and respect and dignity. So when you have the business mentality, you also have the mind of the people component. It makes a perfect match to run a company like Catholic Charities, which is supposed to be treating people with respect and love and providing hope, and I think you need both sides of the spectrum. 

The Good Newsroom: What should Catholics do to help Catholic Charities? 

JAF: It’s embarrassing that our food pantries are not open a lot more because we don’t have enough food. So it’s not even about money, it’s not even about volunteers, which I would encourage people to volunteer at Catholic Charities, to volunteer at the parishes. But when you have one of the biggest social service agencies in the city of New York, we cannot have the food pantries open all the time because we don’t have enough food, that’s something that will tell you a lot. And in two weeks, I can say that that’s happened more than once. 

The Good Newsroom: What’s your vision for Catholic Charities taking over from Monsignor Sullivan? 

JAF: One of the first things, besides talking to the Cardinal [Timothy Dolan] about all of these things, was to call Monsignor Sullivan. And I asked Monsignor if he would stay with me for a while. The more information we have, the better, the more knowledge, the more expertise. I would have been a fool not to want Monsignor Sullivan’s help. 

So the vision is clear, it’s the cardinal’s vision, which is to provide for the people in New York in a respectful way. And with love and dignity, and that is my vision. As much as I can, I’m planning to be out there talking to people. I sat down the other day with a homeless person on the floor, talking about how Catholic Charities is treating him, and what we can do together, because it’s not just about feeding the hungry. It’s how do you do it. 

The Good Newsroom: Does being the first layperson to lead Catholic Charities New York add pressure? 

JAF: It does feel like more pressure. Not just because of me, but I represent a lot more lay people who are now stepping up in different ways in the Church. All of us should be praying for vocations, because we need more priests, we need more deacons. We need a lot more people to help in the Church. I think lay people actually need to step up. So to some degree, I look at myself, like, oh my gosh, hopefully I can do it the right way because that’s going to be an example for other lay people who may need to step up from now on. 

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.