Michel Roy served as secretary general of Caritas Internationalis (CI), the Vatican-based umbrella group of Catholic aid agencies, from 2011 to 2019.
Roy is now retired but continues to be active on a number of fronts, including acting as secretary general of Justice et Paix France.
Given his background, Roy was watching closely when Pope Francis intervened dramatically in CI in November 2022, relieving the organization’s leadership of office and appointing an Italian management consultant to serve as a temporary administrator.
Roy was troubled especially by the removal of Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, who had served as the body’s president since 2015, when he succeeded Cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga.
It was Tagle who was called upon to read out the papal decree to stunned CI members at a meeting in Rome.
At the time, Vatican News quoted Tagle as saying that the papal intervention was “a call to walk humbly with God and to a process of discernment.”
Much of the media coverage suggested that the move was directed principally at CI’s then-secretary general Aloysius John, after staff complaints about his management style, which he robustly defended.
But Roy was disturbed in the months that followed by commentaries suggesting that Tagle had been ousted because of ill-defined shortcomings.
In an email interview with The Pillar, Roy challenged that interpretation of the events of November 2022, offering a critique of the sweeping changes to CI.
To grasp his criticisms, it’s important to know that CI is a confederation of more than 160 members working around the world.
Members meet every four years for a general assembly, which elects a new CI president (or re-elects the current president for another four-year term), as well as a secretary general, a treasurer, and members of a representative council.
CI has an executive board with seven members: The president, the vice president (who is chosen by the president), a person selected by the representative council, and three people appointed by the Holy See.
The confederation is overseen by the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, led since 2022 by Cardinal Michael Czerny, S.J.