Caritas Internationalis struggles to recover reputation after €61 million embezzled from its Luxembourg branch
Caritas InternationalisCaritas Secretary General Alistair Dutton with Cardinal Michael Czerny. (Caritas Internationalis)
The Vatican’s largest social justice network is complainingthat the Trump administration’s cuts to its funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will plunge millions into poverty and even death.
Caritas Internationalis, a charity which was forced to gut over 60 projects and sack 100 staff after it was hit by a €61million ($67 million) fraud scandal in July 2024, is overseen by the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development headed by Cardinal Michael Czerny. It is comprised of 162 member organizations.
With an annual budget of more than $40 billion, Caritas is heavily invested in leftwing political activism, climate change, and anti-Israel lobbying, and has been associated with the World Social Forum — a pro-abortion, pro-LGBT body engaged in anticapitalist activism.
Charity Protests Cash Cuts
On Monday, Caritas Internationalis issued a statement condemning “the reckless decision by the U.S. Administration to abruptly close USAID funded programmes and offices worldwide.”
“Stopping USAID abruptly will kill millions of people and condemn hundreds of millions more to lives of dehumanizing poverty,” claimed Secretary General Alistair Dutton.
Dutton, a Catholic who is listed as a parishionerat a liberal Anglican church in Oxford, is a former Jesuit novice who worked previously for the Jesuit Refugee Service. He called the USAID cuts “an inhumane affront to people’s God-given human dignity, that will cause immense suffering.”
“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,” he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment