CV NEWS FEED // The Vatican’s global aid network’s secretary general is warning that the Trump administration’s funding cuts from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) “will kill millions of people and condemn hundreds of millions more to lives of dehumanising poverty,” according to a Feb. 10 press release from Caritas Internationalis.
“This is an inhumane affront to people’s God-given human dignity, that will cause immense suffering,” Caritas Internationalis’ Secretary General Alistair Dutton said. “Killing USAID also presents massive challenges for all of us in the global humanitarian community, who will have to completely reassess whom we can continue to serve and how.”
Caritas, which is based in Vatican territory in Rome, stated in the release that the harmful effects of the administration’s decision would be “catastrophic.”
“Caritas recognizes the right of any new administration to review its foreign aid strategy,” the organization said. “However, the ruthless and chaotic way this callous decision is being implemented threatens the lives and dignity of millions.”
According to a Feb. 10 Vatican News report, Dutton outlined a few examples of who would be affected by the cuts. Without USAID, Dutton said, more than 6 million people in West Africa will not receive medicine, and 750,000 vulnerable people in Syria and Sudan will not receive food and water.
Without the aid, “critical health problems immediately arise, which can kill millions of people…the people who need help are going to suffer enormously, if they don’t simply die,” he said of those in Syria and Sudan, according to Vatican News.
The Feb. 10 release states that USAID has been “a vital partner of Caritas” for over 60 years. Dutton said that Caritas “[calls] on governments, international agencies, and stakeholders to speak out and strongly urge the U.S. Administration to reverse these dangerous measures.”
The organization expressed hope that productive dialogue will result in a solution in which those most in need are still supported.
Catholic Relief Services, which is a member of Caritas, was the largest USAID fund recipient from 2013 to 2022, as CatholicVote previously reported. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a Catholic, is the new acting director of USAID. Last week, he reduced the number of USAID employees from 14,000 to 294.
The Trump White House stated Feb. 3 that USAID has operated without accountability to taxpayers for decades, funneling money to a range of “ridiculous – and, in many cases, malicious – pet projects” such as $2 million for “sex changes” and “LGBT activism” in Guatemala, as well as thousands for a “transgender comic book” in Peru and a “transgender opera” in Colombia. It also gave nearly $200,000 to a nonprofit linked to US-designated terrorist organizations, and funded 3D printing of abortifacient contraceptives in developing countries, among other projects.
Rubio said last week that “foreign aid at large” should be subject to review. He also said “that the most essential USAID programs will continue, but all functions must be aligned with American foreign policy,” CatholicVote reported.
The Associated Press reported Feb. 10 that the Vatican prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development expressed concerns over the USAID abruptly halting its support of programs dependent on the funding.
“There are programs underway and expectations and we might even say commitments, and to break commitments is a serious thing,” prefect Cardinal Michael Czerny told the AP. “So while every government is qualified to review its budget in the case of foreign aid, it would be good to have some warning because it takes time to find other sources of funding or to find other ways of meeting the problems we have.”
Cardinal Czerny also commented on the Trump administration’s assertion that its USAID cuts are intended to target “woke” programs.
“If the government thinks that its programs have been distorted by ideology, well, then they should reform the programs,” he said. “Many people would say that shutting down is not the best way to reform them.”