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March 4, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – LifeSiteNews.com, an international news agency focused on life and family issues, is today, with partner groups, launching a new project to promote Pope Benedict XVI’s call for a reform of Catholic charitable agencies.

The Charity in Truth Project, based at CharityinTruth.ca, envisions running a series of campaigns calling for reform of specific Church-run charities that have been found funding groups that advocate activities such as abortion, contraception, and homosexual ‘rights’.

The project’s first campaign is urging a meaningful and transparent reform of the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace, the Canadian Bishops’ official development agency in advance of D&P’s national Share Lent collection on March 17th. 

“We believe there could be no more fitting tribute to our Pope Emeritus than to fully heed his call for a rigorous Catholic identity in our Church’s charitable works,” said Patrick Craine, Canadian Bureau Chief for LifeSiteNews.com.

Through a video, petition, and other resources this first Charity in Truth campaign calls on Catholics to offer Canada’s bishops their prayerful support in efforts to end the scandal at D&P. It also urges Catholics to cut off their donations while the reform is underway.

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D&P has been embroiled in controversy since 2009 when LifeSiteNews began an ongoing series of reports revealing that the agency has sent Catholic dollars to over two dozen groups in the developing world that advocate legal abortion among other evils.

D&P’s theme for this year’s Share Lent fundraising drive is ‘Human Dignity’ yet the campaign materials fail to even mention the right to life, focusing exclusively on issues like the option for the poor, care for creation, and economic justice. This, despite the fact that the Church’s Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church states that “promoting human dignity implies above all affirming the inviolability of the right to life, from conception to natural death.”

Partnering with LifeSiteNews.com in the campaign are Campaign Life Coalition, Campagne Quebec Vie, Human Life International, and REAL Women of Canada. Any other organizations that wish to join as a partner in this and future campaigns can contact us at [email protected].

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The Charity in Truth Project is inspired by Pope Benedict XVI’s reform of Catholic charities, mapped out in his 2009 encyclical Caritas in Veritate and codified in a Motu Proprio on Dec. 2, 2012. In the latter legislative document, he laid down clear canonical statutes stipulating that Catholic agencies must remain faithful to Church teaching in their funding relationships.

In Caritas in Veritate, the former Pope emphasized that “openness to life is at the centre of true development,” and he decried the effort by Western nations to export abortion on the developing world.  “Respect for life … cannot in any way be detached from questions concerning the development of peoples,” he wrote.

After the Motu Proprio, in a Jan. 19th, 2013 address to the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, the Pope insisted that Catholic agencies “must exercise a critical vigilance and at times refuse funding and collaborations that, directly or indirectly, favour actions or projects that are at odds with Christian anthropology.”

“We are committed wholeheartedly to the Church’s service of the poor and destitute, but it is because of this deep-held commitment that we believe it has to be carried out in accord with authentic Catholic moral teaching,” said Craine. “Pope Benedict was clear that no true charity can ignore the person’s spiritual and moral framework.”

For more information, including video, petition, and other resources, visit CharityinTruth.ca.