‘So powerful’: Jonathan Roumie on sponsoring African children through Catholic charity

CNA Staff, Dec 23, 2024 / 06:00 am

In 2023, Catholic actor Jonathan Roumie partnered with Unbound, a Catholic child-sponsorship charity, to support the organization’s 1 millionth child — a little girl named Emelyne who lives in poverty in Rwanda.

One year later, after speaking virtually and exchanging letters, the two met in person.

“Meeting Emelyne was — it’s difficult to put into words. You have a concept going into these encounters, from the photos from the letters — and then to see her in person,” Roumie said in a video shared by Unbound.

Roumie, best known for his role portraying Jesus in the hit series “The Chosen,” recently traveled to Rwanda and Tanzania to meet Emelyne as well as Ibrahimu, whom Roumie has been sponsoring since 2019.

Unbound was founded in 1981 by Catholics as an agency focused on putting resources directly in the hands of the world’s poor. Today it uses a network of thousands of sponsors to deliver personalized support to children, elders, and their families living in poverty in Latin America, Asia, and Africa.

When Roumie was searching for a charity to start working with, the main component he was trying to find was “something that spoke to my heart for kids and the development of children and of making sure that they grew up with resources and the ability to succeed,” he told CNA in an interview.

He called his partnership with Unbound “a wonderful, beautiful, life-giving, impactful, relationship on me, just as much as the child I’d say.”

The actor admitted that while growing up fairly sheltered in suburban New York he had no idea about the poverty people experience around the world. He got his first glimpse of it 25 years ago when he first visited Senegal. 

Roumie called his recent trip to Rwanda and Tanzania “truly powerful” as he was able to witness firsthand the impact his sponsorship has had on these children, their families, and the community.

“To be able to visit these children that I’ve been connected to through sponsorship and to see exactly how my resources and resources for everyone there who’s being sponsored … are being stewarded and to what level of impact they’re having — to see that actually come alive and see what the water treatment programs they have set up are, how they manage their resources as a community, how they’re able to then build like a savings account and being able to steward those savings toward individual needs within the community — seeing that in person lived out was just so fruitful and it was so powerful for me,” he said.

He added that meeting the parents of the children, many of whom are being raised by single mothers, was also a very special part of his trip.

“Meeting those moms, [and] in the rare cases the dads, they are just so blown away that they are able to get this kind of help because as you’re driving, sometimes several hours through the jungles and through these minimally developed infrastructures, you’re seeing droves and droves of people living tribally and oftentimes just in shacks and there’s garbage everywhere,” he said.

“Then when you can get to some of these communities that have this system in place, where they’re able to be helped, it’s like a world of difference … and you can just sense their gratitude and the joy that they have within them to God for allowing them to be part of something that allows them to flourish in a way that they didn’t anticipate that they could.”

While in Africa, Roumie was personally impacted by seeing how his contributions are able to help people “move beyond” their circumstances.

“It’s literally being Christ to these people by giving them what you have so that they can live a better life,” he said. 

He pointed out the importance of giving back, especially as Catholics, because “it’s what Jesus mandated us to do as followers of him.”

“By doing so you have the opportunity not only to be Christ to other people in the world but to encounter Christ in the world through poverty, through these different people,” he explained. “It was Mother Teresa that talked about meeting Jesus in her service towards the poorest of the poor. And every opportunity to serve is an opportunity to do just that.”