BALTIMORE — Lawrence A. Pezzullo, a career diplomat who became
the first layman to head Catholic Relief Services, died at his home in
Baltimore July 26. He was 91.
Pezzullo was executive director of CRS, the U.S. bishops'
overseas relief and development agency, from 1982 to 1992.
Coming to CRS after a career in the U.S. Foreign Service,
Pezzullo is credited with taking the agency "to a new level of
professionalism and impact," said a tribute to him posted on the CRS
website.
"Under Pezzullo, CRS initiated everything from full
computerization to a merit-driven personnel system to strategic planning
initiatives," it said. "He gave CRS critical leadership to ensure
funding for a major response to the famine in Ethiopia in 1983."
As the agency's fifth executive director, he also oversaw the
move of CRS' headquarters from New York to Baltimore in 1989.
"Larry Pezzullo lived a life of exemplary service, to his
country, to the church, and to the poor and oppressed around the world. Please
join us in praying for him and his family," the tribute said.
When CRS marked its 50th anniversary in January 1993, Pezzullo
told those gathered for the occasion: "CRS is always learning and changing
as the world changes. The end of the Cold War brought a different world and
many new problems have emerged.'"
CRS is all over the world, he noted, even in such war-torn places
as Liberia and Somalia.
"But we are nonpolitical,'' he said. "We're pushing
only for human beings to live out their destinies with respect.''
A New York native who went to Columbia University, Pezzullo was
ambassador to Uruguay from 1977 to 1979. In 1979 he was named ambassador to
Nicaragua where he helped usher the dictator Anastasio Somoza from power. He
left that job in 1981 and a year later went to CRS.
In March 1993 he returned to the Foreign Service, because
President Bill Clinton named him special envoy to Haiti. He resigned from the
post in April the following year.
He later became an adjunct professor at Goucher College in the
Baltimore suburb of Towson and he lectured widely.
Born May 3, 1926, in New York to Italian immigrant parents,
Pezzullo attended high school in Levittown, N.Y. He served in the U.S. Army
from 1944 to 1946. He earned a bachelor's degree in history from Columbia in
1951 and taught high school for several years. In 1957, he joined the U.S.
Foreign Service.
From 1958 to 1960 he served as consular officer in Ciudad Juarez,
Mexico. He was a foreign affairs officer at the State Department from 1960 to
1962.
From 1962 to 1965, Pezzullo was general services officer in what
was Saigon, now called Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. He was a political officer in
La Paz, Bolivia, from 1965 to 1967; in Bogota, Colombia, from 1967 to 1969; and
in Guatemala from 1969 to 1971. He attended the National War College from 1971
to 1972. For the next two years, Pezzullo was at the Office of Central American
Affairs at the State Department, first as international relations officer, then
deputy director.
From 1974 to 1975, he was a special assistant to an
ambassador-at-large at the State Department.
Before he was named ambassador to Uruguay in 1977, he spent two
years as deputy assistant secretary of state for congressional relations.