A Vatican official has slammed Donald Trump for ‘breaking commitments’ with his cuts to USAID and and warned people are being ‘terrorized’ amid his crackdown on migrants.
Pope Francis’ adviser on migration and development Cardinal Michael Czerny has urged the president to remember his Christian values.
‘A crackdown is a terrible way to administer affairs and much less to administer justice,’ said Czerny, whose own family immigrated to Canada from the Czech Republic as refugees after World War II.
‘And so I’m very sorry that many people are being hurt and indeed terrorized by the measures.
‘All we can hope for is that the people, God’s people and the people of goodwill, will help and protect those vulnerable people who are suddenly made much more vulnerable.’
Czerny heads the church’s Caritas Internationalis charity and development which is among the organizations affected by Trump’s decision to axe foreign aid spending.
Pope Francis ‘adviser on migration and development Cardinal Michael Czerny has urged the president to remember his Christian values amid the crackdown on migrants and USAID funding freeze
‘There are programs underway and expectations and we might even say commitments, and to break commitments is a serious thing,’ Czerny said Sunday.
‘So while every 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 funding or to find other ways of meeting the problems we have.’
USAID is the main international humanitarian and development arm of the US government and in 2023 managed more than $40 billion in combined appropriations.
The Trump administration and billionaire ally Elon Musk have targeted USAID hardest so far in their challenge of the federal government.
A sweeping funding freeze has shut down most of USAID’s programs worldwide, though a federal judge on Friday put a temporary halt to plans to pull thousands of agency staffers off the job.
One of USAID’s biggest non-governmental recipients of funding is Catholic Relief Services, the aid agency of the Catholic Church in the US which has already sounded the alarm about the cuts.
Other programs, including Caritas international programs at the diocesan and national levels, are also being impacted directly or indirectly, Czerny said.
Czerny slammed Donald Trump for ‘breaking commitments’ with his cuts to USAID
Pope Francis has made caring for migrants a priority of his pontificate
‘I think people are still reeling from the news and beginning to figure out how to respond,’ he added.
Trump claimed he was targeting ‘woke’ programs through the USAID cuts which Czerny acknowledged had been a sticking point for the Pope who often complained about Western aid to poor countries being saddled with conditions that may be incompatible with Catholic doctrine.
‘If if the government thinks that its programs have been distorted by ideology, well, then they should reform the programs,’ Czerny said. ‘Many people would say that shutting down is not the best way to reform them.’
He also raised concerns over the president’s mass deportation plans, which have seen more than 8,000 people arrested by ICE since the inauguration, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said last week.
Some are being held in federal prisons while others are being held at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.
The US conference of Catholic bishops put out an unusually critical statement after President Donald Trump’s initial executive orders, saying those ‘focused on the treatment of immigrants and refugees, foreign aid, expansion of the death penalty, and the environment, are deeply troubling and will have negative consequences, many of which will harm the most vulnerable among us.’
More than 8,000 people have been arrested by ICE since the inauguration, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said last week
The response is surprising considering the Catholic hierarchy was among those cheering when the 2022 Supreme Court ruling to end constitutional protections for abortion was handed down in 2022.
Trump won 54 percent of Catholic voters in the 2024 election, a wider margin than the 50% he won of Catholic voters in the 2020 election won by President Joe Biden, a Catholic.
Inspired by the biblical call to ‘welcome the stranger,’ Pope Francis has made caring for migrants a priority of his pontificate, demanding that countries welcome, protect, promote and integrate those fleeing conflicts, poverty and climate disasters.
The Pope has also said governments are expected to do so to the limits of their capacity.
‘And I don’t think that is any country except perhaps Lebanon, and maybe one or two other exceptions who are really over the limit,’ Czerny said.
‘So I think it’s incumbent on us first of all as human beings, as citizens, as believers, and in our case, as Christians.’
