WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — Catholic Relief Services (CRS) is preparing to lay off half of its entire staff due to the Trump administration’s halt of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) spending, according to an internal email obtained by the National Catholic Reporter.
The State Department recently issued a 90-day freeze on foreign aid disbursed through USAID, citing millions in waste and ideologically biased programs. With exceptions for certain food programs and military aid to Israel and Egypt, the pause is meant to give the administration time to conduct a more thorough review of foreign aid to determine what permanent cuts should be made. While presented in the media as simply a source of basic care for the poor and sick, USAID has long funneled millions to waste, frivolity, LGBT activism, abortion promotion, and even groups tied to terrorism.
The National Catholic Reporter reported that CRS anticipates having to lay off as much as 50 percent of its current 7,000-strong staff across every department. “Layoffs have already begun as CRS has been forced to begin shutting down programs funded by USAID, which supplies about half of the Catholic organization’s $1.5 billion budget, CRS president and CEO Sean Callahan said in a staff-wide email sent Feb. 3,” the paper reported.
“To target this tiny portion of the federal budget in such a haphazard and irresponsible way is going to cost people’s lives and livelihoods,” objected Stephen Colecchi, former director of the Office of International Justice and Peace at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). “It is not a thoughtful or humane way to go about treating programs that help the poorest of the poor all over the world.”
However, CRS has long been known to spend its manpower and donations to far darker ends than innocent “help (for) the poorest of the poor,” including works directly at odds with Catholic principles.
Last year, the Lepanto Institute and Population Research Institute published a 130-page report detailing how CRS promotes contraception and condom use in African countries in the name of combating AIDS and has even partnered with health partners that refer minors for abortions. Another Lepanto report last year found that 98 percent of CRS employees donated to pro-abortion candidates and causes.
Lepanto founder and president Michael Hichborn recalls Callahan personally telling him that “CRS works to convert people’s minds to how to treat people and how to do things, but not to the Catholic faith.”
According to Catholic Vote, in 2023 CRS “attempted to mislead senators by stating that African bishops were not opposed to an AIDS relief program that would promote abortion.” When confronted with the bishops’ signatures on a statement opposing the program in question, the “Catholic” charity “then claimed that the bishops did sign the letter but did not understand what they were signing.”
The USAID pause is part of a broader review of federal executive-branch spending currently being spearheaded by Elon Musk’s non-governmental Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) advisory project. Over the weekend, however, a federal judge temporarily blocked the administration from putting USAID employees on paid leave in what critics are calling a particularly extreme case of judicial overreach.