Roberto Navarro — who currently works with Catholic Relief Services to promote actions to help the world’s most vulnerable communities — was born in Reynosa, a Mexican town that borders the state of Texas, where he lived until he was 20 years old.
The eldest of four siblings, he grew up in a home with Catholic parents very devoted to the Virgin of Guadalupe and with his maternal grandmother, with whom he learned to pray the holy rosary. “She was still a catechist at 100 years old,” Navarro said.
“I lived in a poor neighborhood with no potable water or electricity. We were about 15 blocks from one of the city’s garbage dumps and obviously limited in the vision of what I could be, because what you see around you, how small, is what you think you can be,” he said.
As a child, he went to school, and in his free time, he helped his mother sell food or clothes on the street. His father, by then, had two or three jobs to support his family.
“I always dreamed of meeting the pope and traveling to Rome, I thought it would never happen. Obviously, at that time, I didn’t know where God was calling me in the context of the church,” said Navarro, who was part of the choir and youth group in his parish.
It was in the parish where he met his wife, with whom he dated for a little more than three years until they got married, came to the United States, and settled in Texas. He and his wife had five children, one of whom unfortunately died in an accident in 2020.
Navarro studied a technical career in Mexico and worked in the metallurgical industry. Thanks to that, he joined General Dynamics, an aerospace company based in Texas. Over the years, he became operations manager and later became the company’s third-in-command, earning a large salary. At that point, he felt he had fulfilled the “American dream.”
By 2003, the company went into a financial crisis after the industry was hit especially hard following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, he said. “The owners told me, Roberto, there are two months left, it would be good for you to start looking for a job,” he recalled. In prayer with his wife, they decided that he would make a 180-degree career turn.
“I went to work as an administrative assistant in the Catholic Charities Office for the Diocese of Austin, making about $23,000 a year when my annual bonus at the company was between $25,000 and $35,000,” said Navarro, who had always wanted to work in the church.
After four years with Catholic Charities in Austin, Texas, he became director of the Office of Young Adult and Campus Ministry in the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston. He has also served on different boards in Hispanic ministry at the national level. “At the time, I was a board member of La RED, which is the ministry of Pastoral Juvenil Hispana,” and in 2012, he was invited to be part of a delegation that visited Ghana to see the work of Catholic Relief Services.
During the trip, he learned that the position of regional director of the CRS Southwest Office in San Antonio was available. That’s how he came to that organization in 2013, and six years later, he began serving as senior director of church engagement.
“My main job is to be the point of contact with the bishops in the United States. Everything that has to do with Catholic identity within the context of CRS,” he explained. Because of his work, he has visited the Holy See and seen Pope Francis on several occasions, including during his visit to the U.S. in 2015.
Now, Navarro dreams of one day eradicating hunger, as his work involves “advocating for bills that are important to help our neediest brothers and sisters around the world,” he explained. He and his team advocate for Congress to pass (and maintain) the foreign financial aid budget.
“We can ease human suffering and help millions of people through advocacy that changes unjust policies or systems,” said CRS’ website. With campaigns to address the world’s most pressing problems, initiatives of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and CRS “are the official voice of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States on easing human suffering worldwide.”
For Navarro, advocacy is one way people can live the values of the Gospel.
“I can say right now that I have been more blessed in the time I have been serving God than when I was more focused on (reaching) the American dream,” he said.
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