When the Need is 'Everything'

As the war in Ukraine grinds on, U.S. councils continue to raise awareness and support humanitarian efforts

By Jarosław Herman

Jan. 9, 2026

Knights with supplies for Ukraine — New Jersey Knights gather inside a relief container filled with supplies bound for Ukraine during a loading event in Vineland, N.J., Oct. 8, 2022

The Knights of Columbus mourns the passing of Russell Shaw, a towering figure in Catholic media who served as the Order’s director of public information from 1987 to 1997. His “Washington” column — originally titled “Washington Report” — ran in Columbia for more than four decades, from 1966 to 2006. A member of Our Lady of Victory Council 11487 in Washington, D.C., Shaw died Jan. 6 at age 90 in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Throughout his career, Shaw served the Church as a consultor to the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, a contributing editor of Our Sunday Visitor Newsweekly, and in a variety of roles at the U.S. Catholic Conference (later the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops). He authored more than 20 books, most recently Turning Points: How Thirteen Remarkable Men and Women Heard God’s Call and Responded to It, published in 2025 by Ignatius Press.

As a Columbia contributor, Shaw was a close observer of legislation concerning abortion, school choice, assisted suicide, and religious freedom, elucidating complex issues through a Catholic lens. His “Washington” column also addressed Church teaching on contraception, Church-state relations and the vocation of the laity, shedding light on significant events in the culture and in the Church, including Roe v. Wade, Pope John Paul II’s warning of a “culture of death” at World Youth Day in 1993, the AIDS crisis, and the collapse of Soviet communism.

In the face of historic events, Shaw maintained a balance of realism and hope, rallying Knights to meet the next challenge. In his column for the April 1973 issue of Columbia, he wrote of the Supreme Court’s Roe decision earlier that year: “Far from closing off all avenues to abortion opponents, the Supreme Court’s ruling has presented them with a new and urgent agenda containing both short-term and long-term goals. The ruling was a tragedy. But it would be even more tragic if the pro-life movement now failed to accept the challenge thrown down by the court.”

In “A Challenge to America” Russell Shaw covered St. John Paul II’s 1995 visit to the United States for the January 1996 issue of Columbia. (Knights of Columbus Supreme Council Archives)

In the July 2005 issue of Columbia, Shaw discussed Pope Benedict XVI’s warning about a “dictatorship of relativism” — a phrase that drew criticism from some in the media after the pope used it in an address to the College of Cardinals shortly before his election: “The central creed of relativism can be stated like this: No statement is absolutely true except one — the statement that no statement is absolutely true. That is what’s technically called a self-referential proposition. And self-referential propositions refute themselves.”

As director of the Knights’ Office of Public Information, Shaw provided a variety of special services to the Supreme Council and served as the Order’s spokesman in Washington. Projects during his tenure included co-editing Anti-Catholicism in the Media: An Examination of Whether Elite News Organizations Are Biased Against the Church, which presented the findings of a 1991 study conducted by the Center for Media and Public Affairs and commissioned by the Knights of Columbus. He also authored an Evangelium Vitae study guide published by the Catholic Information Service following Pope John Paul II’s 1995 encyclical.

In his tribute to Past Supreme Knight Virgil Dechant, published in Our Sunday Visitor in 2020 and reprinted in Columbia, Shaw evaluated the new decade with characteristic frankness: “Columbus sometimes sailed on rough seas. As the secular environment becomes increasingly hostile, the Knights may be doing the same.”

Shaw was predeceased by his wife, Carmen Shaw, who died in 2022. They had been married since 1958 and had five children, 10 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.