U.S. State Department working with faith-based groups

(Vatican Radio) United States Secretary of State John Kerry met with the Vatican Secretary of State Archbishop Pietro Parolin on Tuesday for more than an hour speaking about issues ranging from Syria to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

One of the members of Kerry’s staff present at the meeting was the head of the State Department’s Office of Faith-Based Community Initiatives, Shaun Casey.

The office, established in mid-2013, is part of an effort to recognize the role religion plays in affecting US foreign policy.

“If you look a the major issues of the day, religion cuts across almost all of the tasks that he is involved in, so I spent a lot time trying to help him get up to speed on how religion works in different geographic areas and issues,” Casey told Vatican Radio.

He said that although not everyone at the State Department is religious, he has received support from all quarters.

“If you think about the work we traditionally do in aid and development, human rights, and conflict mitigation” - he explained - “faith-based groups are involved in all of that, so we need to do better at listening and learning from what those faith-based groups are doing across the mission of the State Department.”

Casey also said he is receiving support from the faith-based organizations he has encountered.

“I have already met with over 300 religious groups in the first five months of my work, so there is a tremendous demand on the part of faith-related organizations to come and look for ways they might partner with us, or learn what we’re doing, so they might get better at what they do,” he said.

Listen to the full interview by Charles Collins with Shuan Casey: