On Tuesday (May 30) Alistair Dutton was sworn in as Secretary General of Caritas Internationalis by the Prefect of the Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development, Cardinal Michael Czerny. “I am delighted to take office as the Secretary General of Caritas Internationalis. Today our Confederation returns to its ordinary governance and management arrangements and looks to the future. Now we will entirely focus on our mission at the service of those on the peripheries of society,” said Dutton.
On the left Alistair Dutton, Secretary General of Caritas Internationalis. On the right Cardinal Michael Czerny, S.J., Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.
The temporary administration has now come to an end and Caritas Internationalis has a new leadership that will guide it until 2027. Along with the Secretary General, the new President of the Confederation is Archbishop Tarcisius Isao Kikuchi, Archbishop of Tokyo; the Vice President is Ms. Kirsty Robertson, who is also CEO of Caritas Australia; and the Treasurer is Mr. Patrick Dubecquois, Deputy director of Caritas Belgium. “I am looking forward to working closely with them and the team of Caritas Internationalis general secretariat. We are one Caritas family serving one human family,” said the 11th Secretary General of Caritas Internationalis.
Alistair Dutton is currently Executive Director of SCIAF (Caritas Scotland). He has a long experience in Caritas, and from 2009 to 2014 he worked in the Vatican-based General Secretariat of Caritas Internationalis as Humanitarian Director. “Serving Caritas over the last three decades has been a great privilege for me. I promise to listen humbly, reflect thoughtfully, and build bridges,” said the new Secretary General, who has already started working with the Caritas Internationalis team in Rome.
Alistair Dutton and the Caritas Internationalis staff.
In his career, Dutton has led projects in more than 70 countries. In 2014 he was the CEO of the Sphere Project, the international humanitarian standards body. From 2005 to 2009, he was head of the Humanitarian Programmes Unit for Africa of Christian Aid. Previously, from 1999 to 2005 Dutton was senior humanitarian officer of the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD), a member of Caritas Internationalis and official aid agency of the Catholic Church in England and Wales.