James Joseph Norris (1907-1976) was a New Jersey born alumnus of Catholic University with a renowned career as global humanitarian working with war refugees and notable as the only layman to address the Second Vatican Council with a speech he wrote and delivered in Latin. He was the eldest child of James Henry Norris and Rose Elizabeth Schenk and graduated from Battin High School at age 16 in Elizabeth, New Jersey. That same year, he joined the Missionary Cenacle Apostolate (or Trinitarians) and two years later enrolled at The Catholic University of America (CUA) as a seminarian, but his studies were interrupted in 1929 when he was appointed Prefect of St. Joseph’s High School. During the Great Depression, he acted as the head of finances for the struggling Trinitarians and returned to CUA, where he received his Bachelor’s Degree in 1933. Recognizing he did not have a priestly vocation he left the Trinitarians in 1934.

He worked with the finances of a Catholic orphanage on Staten Island and also attended graduate school at Fordham University’s School of Social Service. In 1941 became assistant executive director for the National Catholic Community Service (NCCS), part of the National Catholic Welfare Conference (now United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) in Washington, D.C., coordinating American Catholic efforts with the US Government via the United Service Organization (USO). He became acting director of NCCS in 1943 and accepted commission in 1944, serving as a Lieutenant junior grade in the Naval Reserve as a commander of an Armed Guard Unit in several war theatres. In 1945, he went to War Relief Services (WRS), the American Catholic overseas aid agency as special assistant to the executive director, working with the federal government to relocate World War II refugees. In 1946, he became European director of WRS and mobilized millions in aid from American Catholics. In 1951, Norris together with Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, (later Pope Paul VI), created the International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC) and in 1959, returned to New York where he continued working for Catholic Relief Services (CRS, the former WRS, renamed 1955) to assist small nations. Norris was executive assistant to the director, Bishop Edward E. Swanstrom, and responsible for the global relief program.

In 1963, Norris was invited by Pope Paul VI to be a lay auditor at the Second Vatican Council in Rome. During the Third Session, he lobbied the Council to recognize poverty as a concern of the whole church, not just for the Apostolate of the Laity. The Pope permitted him to address the Council, and on November 5, 1964, he became the first layman to participate in a council debate when he introduced Chapter Four, Paragraph 24, De Paupertate Mundiali, in the schema on the Church in the Modern World. In his historic speech, entitled World Poverty and the Christian Conscience, he issued “a clarion call for action which would involve the creation of a structure that would devise the kind of institutions, contacts, forms of cooperation and policy which the Church can adopt, to secure full Catholic participation in the worldwide attack on poverty.” His concerns were incorporated in Gaudium et Spes, the Council’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. He became a member of the Post-Conciliar Commission on the Apostolate of the Laity and participated in the efforts leading to the creation by Pope Paul VI of the Pontifical Commission (later Council) ‘Justice and Peace’ in 1967. Four years later, the same Pope created the Pontifical Council Cor Unum to coordinate various national Catholic relief agencies. Norris was a charter member of both entities.

Paul VI designated Norris the Holy See’s representative at the funeral of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and appointed him an ‘Expert’ in the 1971 Synod of Bishops on the subject of Justice in the World. Norris was also a member of the Board of Trustees of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, in Washington, D.C., and a member of the Shrine’s Marian Devotion Committee. His activity on behalf of the Holy See was conducted while he continued his own efforts through Catholic Relief Services and the International Catholic Migration Commission to aid the new refugees emerging from such places as Biafra, Burundi, and Vietnam. In November 1976, he was notified by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees that he was to be the recipient of their highest humanitarian award, but died before the medal could be conferred. His old friend, Pope Paul VI, offered Mass for the repose of his soul as thousands of tributes and letters of condolence to Norris’ family poured in from every corner of the globe.

Norris’  archival papers reside at both Notre Dame University Archives and Catholic University’s Special Collections. Additionally, CU has the records of several organizations that employed Norris, including the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), the National Catholic Community Service (NCCS), Second Vatican Council, and the currently processing Catholic Relief Services. For more information, please contact us.  See also Trinity Missions James J. Norris Award. Special thanks to Stephen Norris for the extensive biographical information and to Shane MacDonald and Alexis Howlett for assistance on the images.