The beneficial organization of the Vatican expressed its outrage on Monday, so it called the “reckless” and “inhuman” plans of the United States to gut to USAID, with the man of Pope Francis points in the development help of the administration that the administration Trump recalls the Christian principles about the care of others when he begins to govern.
Cardinal Michael Czerny, a Canadian Jesuit born in Checa .
Caritas warned on Monday that millions of people will die as a result of the “ruthless” decision of the United States of “recklessly” to stop USAID funds, and hundreds of millions more will be condemned to “dehumanize poverty.”
USAID is the main international humanitarian and development of the United States Government and in 2023 it managed more than $ 40 billion in combined allocations, representing about 40% of the global aid budget. The Trump administration and the ally billionaire Elon Musk have signed up to the hardest USAID so far in their federal government challenge: a freezing of radical funds has closed most of the USAID programs worldwide, although a federal judge on Friday He arrested the plans on Friday to plan thousands of the agency's employees outside the work.
In an interview with Associated Press, Czerny said that each incoming government has the right to review its foreign aid budget and even reform an agency like Usaid. But he said it is something else dismantling an agency after having made financing commitments.
Get last minute national news
For the news that affects Canada and worldwide, register to receive news alerts that are given directly when they occur.
“There are ongoing programs and expectations and we could even say commitments, and breaking commitments is something serious,” said Czerny on Sunday. “Then, although each 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 financing or find other ways of satisfying the problems we have.”
One of the biggest beneficiaries of Usaid non -governmental funds are Catholic aid services, the Catholic Church's help agency in the United States, which has already sounded the alarm on cuts. Other programs, including international caritas programs at diocesan and national level, are also being directly or indirectly affected, Czerny said.
In a statement, Caritas urged governments to urgently ask for the administration of the United States to reverse the course. “Stop USAID will endanger the essential services for hundreds of millions of people, will undermine decades of progress in humanitarian and development assistance, destabilize regions that depend on this critical support and condemn millions to dehumanize poverty or even death,” he said .
While it is large, the USAID budget is lower than a percentage point of the Gross Domestic Product of the USA and a fraction of the biblical call to decim 10% of one's income, Czerny said.
Czerny acknowledged that Francis has often complained that Western help to poor countries were charged with conditions that can be incompatible with Catholic doctrine, such as programs that promote gender ideology. The Trump administration has said that it is aimed at these “awakened” programs in its USAID cuts.
“If the government thinks that its programs have been distorted by ideology, well, then they should reform the programs,” said Czerny. “Many people would say that closing is not the best way to reform them.”
Another area of concern for the Vatican and Catholic hierarchy in the United States is the repression of the Trump administration against undocumented migrants. The White House Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said last week that more than 8,000 people had been arrested in immigration compliance actions since Trump's opening on January 20. Some are detained in federal prisons, while others are detained at the Naval Bay of the Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
“A repression is a terrible way to administer issues and much less to administer justice,” said Czerny, whose family emigrated to Canada as refugees after World War II. “And therefore, I regret that many people are being hurt and, in fact, terrified by the measures.”
“All we can expect is that people, the people of God and the people of good will, will help and protect those vulnerable people who suddenly become much more vulnerable,” he added.
The United States Catholic Bishop Conference presented an unusually critical statement after the initial executive orders of President Donald Trump, saying that those who “focused on the treatment of immigrants and refugees, foreign aid, expansion of the death penalty and death penalty and The environment are deeply worrisome and Will have negative consequences, many of which will damage the most vulnerable among us. ”
Inspired by the biblical call to “welcome the stranger”, Francis has made the care of migrants a priority of his pontificate, demanding that countries welcome, protect, promote and integrate those conflicts that flee and climatic disasters. Francis has also said that governments are expected to do so to the limits of their capacity.
“And I don't think that is a country, except perhaps Lebanon, and perhaps one or two other exceptions, which are really above the limit,” said Czerny. “So I think it corresponds to us first as human beings, as citizens, believers and, in our case, as Christians.”
& Copy 2025 the Canadian press