The U.S. Agency for International Development proved a uniquely vulnerable target for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. Established by President John Kennedy, the 64-year-old institution was decimated by the D.O.G.E. boys over a handful of days in late January.
That Musk-powered takedown produced significant collateral damage. Catholic Relief Services, the U.S. church’s global humanitarian relief and development agency, had been U.S.A.I.D.’s biggest faith-based international partner.
Federal contract terminations have resulted in scores of shuttered programs and pink slips for hundreds of employees in the United States and around the world. Despite that institutional pain, William O’Keefe, C.R.S.’s executive vice president for Mission, Mobilization and Advocacy, insists that C.R.S. remains ready to carry on.
“I’m extremely sad to have to say goodbye to many colleagues whom we’ve been unable to keep on because of all these cuts,” he said in a conversation with America on March 21. “But I think morale for those remaining is actually very high because the mission has never been more important.”
In 2025, global hunger is on the rise, he reports. And “there’s more conflict, more migration and governments all around the world are pulling back [from foreign assistance], so people are very committed to their mission and to the mission of the organization.”
“It’s been really difficult navigating all these waters,” Mr. O’Keefe said, “but I honestly think people are all-in, trying to figure out: ‘How do we move forward from here? How do we help this many people more efficiently and more effectively with the resources we have?’”
According to the World Food Program, hunger will threaten more than 340 million people in 74 countries this year. And acute humanitarian crises continue in Gaza, Sudan, Haiti and other nations where C.R.S. and local partners have been active for years.
In a statement released on March 17, C.R.S. reported halting “much of our U.S. government supported work due to the lack of payments: food in warehouses could not be distributed to the hungry and women and children could not get vital health and nutrition services.”
According to the statement, the “termination of dozens of CRS’ life-saving projects will permanently cut off critical aid to more than 20 million people worldwide.”
“These programs do more than save lives,” the statement continued. “They help lift communities and countries out of poverty. They support local faith-based and church partners that provide services and stability to their communities and to their countries.”
Speaking at a conference in Washington on March 24 sponsored by Jesuit Refugee Service/USA and the Center for Migration Studies of New York, Cardinal Robert W. McElroy, recently appointed from the Diocese of San Diego to lead the Archdiocese of Washington, criticized the abrupt termination of U.S.A.I.D. “Eliminating our government’s meager but so crucial assistance to those who are in need for clinics, health, vaccines, and food services throughout the world,” he said, is “utterly contrary” to “our life as disciples of Jesus Christ.”
He called the suspension of U.S. humanitarian aid a “moral theft [from] the poorest and most desperate men, women and children in our world today” that is “unconscionable through any prism of Catholic thought.”
Mr. O’Keefe reports that after weeks of turmoil, C.R.S. has lost about half of its funding because of the termination of U.S.A.I.D. contracts. Final decisions will be made by April 19 and he hopes that some imperiled programs may yet survive.
Many life-saving programs have been funded, he said. But bearing the brunt of the dismantling of U.S.A.I.D. will be livelihood assistance programs and efforts aimed at addressing climate change and promoting agricultural innovation and adaptability—“support to vulnerable people in more chronic situations around the world.”
At risk are decades of investments aimed at addressing global poverty and building up local economic viability, the kinds of programs that allow subsistence farmers, pressed by vast economic or climatological forces beyond their control, to remain rooted in the communities and nations of their birth—part of the reason, critics say, that the wholesale termination of such programs will prove counterproductive to White House goals to reduce immigration.
“We are doing these programs and working with our church partners around the world because it’s the right thing to do and because it helps people,” Mr. O’Keefe said. Though “we also think that helping small farmers to grow more food productively in Central America allows them to make the choice not to take the dangerous journey north… Frankly, most people would prefer to stay where they are if they can raise their families, take care of their kids and see a future for themselves.”
Among C.R.S.’s immediate concerns in the aftermath of the U.S.A.I.D. shutdown, he said, “is that we still have not been consistently reimbursed for approved expenses.” Like other humanitarian agencies, C.R.S. has not been paid for work already performed under contracts and agreements that predate President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
“That’s a big deal because these programs are very significant,” he said. “They’re expensive, and we don’t have the tens of millions of dollars to loan to the federal government.”
A bright spot among the U.S.A.I.D. gloom has been a spike in donations this Lenten season, Mr. O’Keefe said. The C.R.S. annual Rice Bowl appeal is observing its 50th anniversary this year.
Can more donations make up the abrupt shortfall in government support? “There’s absolutely no doubt that the prayers and fasting and almsgiving of American Catholics this Lent is especially needed and meaningful,” he said. “Our donors have responded, but there’s no way that the contributions of our government can be made up for in the short term by anybody else.
“There is no organization or group of people that can mobilize the kinds of resources our government can, but absolutely people can help and support the incredible needs out there.”
But while many Catholics have been reaching for their wallets to help, others have been taking to their keyboards to endorse culture warriors who have been celebrating hits to church humanitarian efforts like C.R.S. and Catholic Charities U.S.A. Both national efforts have endured sometimes wild accusations even from prominent U.S. Catholics, perhaps most notably Vice President JD Vance, since Mr. Trump returned to Washington.
The church’s role in assisting legal immigrants like refugees and asylum seekers has provoked some of the most vicious attacks, but in a period of extreme suspicion of all institutions, fed by online conspiracy and rumor mongering, C.R.S.’s humanitarian efforts have also been targeted.
“It shouldn’t be political to help the poor around the world,” Mr. O’Keefe said.
According to Mr. O’Keefe, it has become increasingly difficult to manage the misinformation and invective directed at C.R.S., and, in a time of A.I. bots and social media server farms, to assess even the reality of the critics themselves.
“On social media, it is easier to break things down than build them up,” he said. “It is easier to attack institutions than to do the real work of understanding what they’re doing and really recognizing the incredible complications that they [face] in difficult situations.
“The church has created institutions like Catholic Charities, like C.R.S., to do the work of the Gospel on behalf of the community. Those organizations were created by the bishops, are supported by the bishops, are run by the bishops—of course with strong lay involvement,” he said. “This is the church doing the work of the Gospel around the world.”
“These ad hominem attacks are attacks on the church. It’s an attack on the bishops and it’s an attack on us as Catholics, all of us,” he said.
“All I can say about C.R.S. is we’re a pro-life organization implementing the Gospel on behalf of the American Catholic community and the bishops, and we have been doing so for 80 years—hundreds of millions of people are alive as a result. We don’t have anything to apologize for about that.”
Another frequent avenue of attack has been the charge that accepting government money begins an inevitably corrupting cycle for church humanitarian workers. Mr. O’Keefe counters that American Catholics have an obligation to participate in stewardship of the national wealth.
“Catholics pay taxes,” he said, “and Catholic organizations have every right to to compete fairly [for government humanitarian contracts]. Frankly, I have a lot more confidence in how Catholic institutions and other faith-based institutions are going to help, over time, to create a better world than without them [allowed into the mix].”
Mr. O’Keefe directs critics of church collaboration with government to “Populorum Progressio.” In that 1967 encyclical, Pope Paul VI writes that just as wealthy individuals have the personal responsibility to assist the less fortunate, wealthy governments and societies have comparable obligations to assist the world’s vulnerable and impoverished nations.
“The hungry nations of the world cry out to the peoples blessed with abundance,” Paul writes. “And the Church, cut to the quick by this cry, asks each and every man to hear his brother’s plea and answer it lovingly.”
Pope Paul urges “wealthier nations” to accept three obligations: mutual solidarity, social justice and universal charity—“the effort to build a more humane world community, where all can give and receive, and where the progress of some is not bought at the expense of others.”
“Our country will be judged on how well we responded to the least of these,” Mr. O’Keefe concludes. “What’s the point of being the most powerful and wealthiest country in the world if you don’t use that power and that wealth for the betterment of others and for the advancement of the common good on a global scale?”
The Weekly Dispatch takes a deep dive into breaking events and issues of significance around our world and our nation today, providing the background readers need to make better sense of the headlines speeding past us each week. For more news and analysis from around the world, visit Dispatches.
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