The Vatican’s charity voiced outrage Monday at what it called the “reckless” and “unhuman” U.S. plans to gut USAID, with Pope Francis’ point-man on development aid insisting that the Trump administration remember Christian principles about caring for others because it begins governing.
Cardinal Michael Czerny, a Czech-born Canadian Jesuit, is considered one of the cardinals most closely related to Francis’ pontificate and heads the Vatican office accountable for migrants, the environment, the church’s Caritas Internationalis charity and development.
Caritas on Monday warned that hundreds of thousands of individuals will die in consequence of the “ruthless” U.S. decision to “recklessly” stop USAID funding, and a whole lot of hundreds of thousands more will probably be condemned to “dehumanizing poverty.”
USAID is the essential international humanitarian and development arm of the U.S. government and in 2023 managed greater than $40 billion in combined appropriations, accounting for around 40% of the worldwide aid budget. The Trump administration and billionaire ally Elon Musk have targeted USAID hardest thus far of their challenge of the federal government: A sweeping funding freeze has shut down most of USAID’s programs worldwide, though a federal judge on Friday put a short lived halt to plans to tug 1000’s of agency staffers off the job.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Czerny said every incoming government has the appropriate to review its foreign aid budget, and even to reform an agency like USAID. But he said it’s one other thing to dismantle an agency after it has made funding commitments.
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“There are programs underway and expectations and we would even say commitments, and to interrupt commitments is a serious thing,” Czerny said Sunday. “So while every government is qualified to review its budget within the case of foreign aid, it might be good to have some warning since it takes time to seek out other sources of funding or to seek out other ways of meeting the issues we have now.”
One in every of USAID’s biggest non-governmental recipients of funding is Catholic Relief Services, the help agency of the Catholic Church within the U.S., which has already sounded the alarm in regards to the cuts. Other programs, including Caritas international programs on the diocesan and national levels, are also being impacted directly or not directly, Czerny said.
In an announcement, Caritas urged governments to urgently call on the U.S. administration to reverse course. “Stopping USAID will jeopardize essential services for a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of individuals, undermine a long time of progress in humanitarian and development assistance, destabilize regions that depend on this critical support, and condemn hundreds of thousands to dehumanizing poverty and even death,” it said.
While large, the USAID budget is lower than one percentage point of the U.S. gross domestic product and a fraction of the biblical call to tithe 10% of 1’s income, Czerny noted.
Czerny acknowledged Francis has often complained about Western aid to poor countries being saddled with conditions which may be incompatible with Catholic doctrine, resembling programs promoting gender ideology. The Trump administration has said it’s targeting these “woke” programs in its USAID cuts.
“If the federal government thinks that its programs have been distorted by ideology, well, then they need to reform the programs,” Czerny said. “Many individuals would say that shutting down just isn’t one of the best technique to reform them.”
One other area of concern for the Vatican and Catholic hierarchy within the U.S. is the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented migrants. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said last week that greater than 8,000 people had been arrested in immigration enforcement actions since Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration. Some are being held in federal prisons while others are being held on the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.
“A crackdown is a terrible technique to administer affairs and far less to manage justice,” said Czerny, whose family immigrated to Canada as refugees after World War II. “And so I’m very sorry that many individuals are being hurt and indeed terrorized by the measures.”
“All we are able to hope for is that the people, God’s people and the people of goodwill, will help and protect those vulnerable people who find themselves suddenly made rather more vulnerable,” he added.
The U.S. conference of Catholic bishops put out an unusually critical statement after President Donald Trump’s initial executive orders, saying those “focused on the treatment of immigrants and refugees, foreign aid, expansion of the death penalty, and the environment, are deeply troubling and can have negative consequences, lots of which is able to harm essentially the most vulnerable amongst us.”
Inspired by the biblical call to “welcome the stranger,” Francis has made caring for migrants a priority of his pontificate, demanding that countries welcome, protect, promote and integrate those fleeing conflicts, poverty and climate disasters. Francis has also said governments are expected to accomplish that to the boundaries of their capability.
“And I don’t think that’s any country except perhaps Lebanon, and perhaps one or two other exceptions, who’re really over the limit,” Czerny said. “So I feel it’s incumbent on us to begin with as human beings, as residents, as believers, and in our case, as Christians.”
© 2025 The Canadian Press
