By Michael Hichborn*
A Plenary Meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in Orlando, Florida, June 16, 2023 (Photo – Vatican News).
The relationship between the Catholic bishops of the United States and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) started almost as soon as USAID came into existence.
USAID was established through the Foreign Assistance Act in 1961, and, according to a 1974 budget submission to USAID, Catholic Relief Services (CRS) began receiving funding from it in 1963, just two years after USAID was created.
Initially, CRS received USAID funding for the distribution of food, but over the ensuing years, this would expand to providing clean water, health assistance programs, the distribution of mosquito nets, anti malaria medicine, and the like.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, CRS-led and USAID-funded programs were expanded to include initiatives regarding HIV/AIDS, healthcare programs, financial development programs, and initiatives directed toward societal “behavior change.” By the early 2000’s, these expanded programs led to a series of moral compromises, as will soon be illustrated.
Quid pro quo
Sean Callahan, President and CEO of Catholic Relief Services since 2016
Over the years, CRS has enjoyed a rather cozy quid pro quo relationship with USAID and its affiliated agencies, like the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the Global Fund (both of which are major suppliers and promoters of contraception and/or condoms.)
Each year, representatives from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and CRS send a letter to congress and give testimony in favor of expanded funding for these organizations.
In return, CRS has received top-dollar grants for projects overseas. From 2005 through 2024, CRS received more than $4.5 billion from USAID, and over $1 billion from PEPFAR. These figures do not include the funding CRS would have received as a sub-grantee on a project it was not leading.
Faithful Catholics of good will may debate whether or not a Catholic aid agency should be receiving massive amounts of funding from the federal (secular) government, or indeed whether or not the corporal works of mercy should be industrialized with paid workers rather than being conducted by professed religious or dedicated pay people.
But what is not up for debate is that at least since 2012, CRS should have been completely cut off from these granting agencies altogether.
The reason is that in 2012 Pope Benedict XVI published a Motu Proprio titled “On the Service of Charity” – a law of the Church which has NOT been abrogated – clearly forbidding organizations like CRS from receiving funding from agencies like USAID. Article 10 § 3 of the motu proprio states that: “the diocesan Bishop is to ensure that charitable agencies dependent upon him do not receive financial support from groups or institutions that pursue ends contrary to Church’s teaching. Similarly, lest scandal be given to the faithful, the diocesan Bishop is to ensure that these charitable agencies do not accept contributions for initiatives whose ends, or the means used to pursue them, are not in conformity with the Church’s teaching.”
The first line, prohibiting financial support from “groups or institutions that pursue ends contrary to the Church’s teaching” automatically forbids the reception of funds from USAID, and the reason for this is simple.
Population control
Archbishop Nelson J. Pérez of Philadelphia, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Catholic Relief Services since 2022
USAID was created in 1961 as a population control organization that has written into its charter the requirement of countries receiving USAID funds to report what steps they are taking to reduce their own fertility rates.
The Act firmly establishes “control of population growth” as one of the essential criteria for determining a country’s commitment to “the most effective use of such assistance to help satisfy basic human needs of poor people.” [Sec. 102, (b)(4)].
Section 104 of the act – titled “Population and Health” – is even more explicit. In the first part of this section, titled “Findings,” the Act establishes that “uncontrolled population growth can violate otherwise successful development efforts.”
It then begins attacking “large families” and advocating for “effective birth control” and “effective family planning” in favor of “economic progress.”
The act says: “While every country has the right to determine its own policies with respect to population growth, voluntary population planning programs can make a substantial contribution to economic development, higher living standards, and improved health and nutrition.”
Following this, in a section titled, “Assistance for Population Planning,” the act then says: “In order to increase the opportunities and motivation for family planning and to reduce the rate of population growth, the President is authorized to furnish assistance, on such terms and conditions as he may determine, for voluntary population planning.
In addition to the provision of family planning information and services, including also information and services which relate to and support natural family planning methods, and the conduct of directly relevant demographic research, population planning programs shall emphasize motivation for small families.”
Subsection (d) of section 104 – titled “Integration of Assistance Programs” – then provides the requirement to integrate population control measures in with other aspects of foreign development projects.
The very first line requires administered assistance to focus on the interrelationship between “population growth” and “improvement in living standards.”
It further requires study on the impact of all assistance programs on “population growth.”
In other words – reducing population growth is to be viewed as a means of improving standards of living, and therefore, all assistance should be directed toward slowing population growth.
The very next line states: “All appropriate activities proposed for financing under this chapter shall be designed to build motivation for smaller families.”
Everything ‘good’ about USAID—food aid, clean water, medical care, education—is tainted by its population control agenda. As if that’s not enough, this section further stipulates that:
“Population planning programs shall be coordinated with other programs aimed at reducing the infant mortality rate, providing better nutrition for pregnant women and infants, and raising the standard of living of the poor.”
It is not an accident that USAID is the largest supplier of birth control and family planning programs in the world. A 2020 USAID flier boasts that due to its efforts, contraception use rose from under 10% in 1965 to 32%, reducing family sizes from over six to 4.2.
But it’s not just USAID. The “AIDS relief” program PEPFAR, which works hand-in-glove with USAID, also integrates family planning into nearly every aspect of its programs.
In a May 2023 report by USAID titled “Comprehensive Agency Report on Condoms and Lubricants FY2022,” USAID indicated that between 2016 and 2022 – with funding from PEPFAR – a total value of $158.1 million in condoms and lubricants were supplied to 61 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, Middle East, and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) regions.
USAID’s very essence clearly constitutes what Pope Benedict called an agency “that pursues ends contrary to the Church’s teaching,” firmly prohibiting organizations like CRS from receiving such funds.
And as indicated earlier, the consistent reception of USAID funds over the years has indeed led to a moral degradation through a series of moral compromises.
The end result is that CRS has been caught time and again directly promoting condoms, facilitating the promotion and distribution of contraception, and even directly funding organizations dedicated to the provision and promotion of abortion.
The logo of the United States Agency for International Development. The agency was recently defunded by the new US President, Donald Trump
CRS subterfuge
As the old saying goes, “If you take the king’s shilling, you’ll do the king’s willing.” This is precisely why Pope Benedict also forbade agencies like CRS from receiving funds “for initiatives whose ends, or the means used to pursue them, are not in conformity with the Church’s teaching.”
In 2008, noted theologian Germain Grisez formally requested the bishops of the United States to investigate CRS for distributing material that explicitly promoted condom use.
What he discovered was a letter to CRS’s partners in the PEPFAR-funded AIDSRelief project, written by CRS’ Chief of Party for the project.
This letter was intended to introduce a new flipchart created by CRS, explaining that CRS deliberately omitted its logo from the flipchart due to “potential sensitivity of the information contained in these materials among Church partners.” The letter further instructed that the “CRS name and logo should not be included in any adaptations” of the flipchart, and that “if you are concerned about the reactions of the Bishops and the Church in your country,” CRS would lend assistance.
But this flipchart provided grotesque, graphic illustrations on how to use both male and female condoms, and multiple statements encouraging condom use to avoid the transmission of HIV. Despite CRS’s consistent protest that it does not encourage condom use, or provide condoms, the flipchart tells the instructor several times to “Inform client where condoms can be obtained.”
Worse still is that this CRS-produced flipchart openly encourages gravely immoral acts within marriage. For example, page 52 provides a “client” testimony on how she and her husband used condoms.
Since that time, the Lepanto Institute (LI) has conducted dozens of investigations into CRS projects, finding time and again that CRS is complicitly involved in the promotion and distribution of contraception and condoms through projects funded by USAID and its associated agencies.
For instance, in 2014 LI and Population Research Institute (PRI) published the results of an investigation into a PEPFAR-funded, CRS led project called Support and Assistance to Indigenous Implementing Agencies (SAIDIA).
This report, which included information gathered by investigators who interviewed the implementors of the project, showed that CRS and its partners were promoting both contraception and condoms to adolescents and young people through a program called Healthy Choices II.
Predictably, CRS publicly denied that healthy Choices II contained the contraception- or condom-promoting components, claiming:
“CRS’ implementing partners used two out of the four sections (those two which were appropriate and in accordance with Church and CRS doctrine) and did not use the other sections, as they were deemed inappropriate.”
These claims, however, were completely contradicted by CRS’ own reports to the federal government (obtained through a FOIA request) on the SAIDIA project. In fact, a CRS grant proposal from April of 2012 specifically indicates that CRS’s use of Healthy Choices II includes all 8 modules, indicating the inclusion of the condom- and contraception-promoting components.
In 2019, we produced a report on the USAID-funded Mikolo Project, whose stated intention was to train community health volunteers (CHVs) who would (as indicated by a USAID evaluation of the project):
“ensure the delivery of the continuum of care. These services and practices include: the delivery of FP (Family Planning) services to women of reproductive age, including youth.”
The same evaluation specified that these services included contraceptive pills, injections, and devices. CRS was not the lead on the project but was brought in to establish the funding mechanism for these CHVs, knowing fully well that their mission prioritized the spread and use of contraception.
After bringing this information to the attention of authorities at CRS, we were informed that CRS’s role in the project was “very small,” but the point that was missed is that as seemingly small as CRS’ role was, its work was vital to the overall success of the project, which was to make these CHVs and their operations “self sustaining.” The battery on a car is a very “small part,” but without one, a car won’t go anywhere.
In 2020, we discovered several documents bearing CRS’ copyright openly encouraging the use of condoms, including instruction to adolescents saying that to stay healthy, they should “use a condom during sex to reduce the risk of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV, and pregnancies.”
Promoting abortion
Women in Cameroon are encouraged to limit family size by CRS/USAID programs
Most egregiously, however, was CRS’ provision of USAID funds to a radically pro-abortion organization in Cameroon.
In March of 2024, PRI and LI once again teamed up to publish the results of a year-long investigation into three CRS project areas funded by USAID and PEPFAR.
In Cameroon, CRS – in direct violation of the Mexico City Policy, then in place – provided at least $359,000 to an organization called RENATA, whose very logo is an icon for abortion: a pregnant woman with an “x” marked on her belly.
As a subcontractor on CRS’s KIDSS project, RENATA was contracted to provide “sexual and reproductive health services.”
RENATA made it very clear during the time of the project that it provides and promotes contraception and condoms, and even admitted to taking young girls to obtain illegal abortions. RENATA was even working to have Cameroon overturn its pro-life laws.
As published in this same report, we also proved that CRS was the lead implementing organization on the USAID/PEPFAR-funded DREAMS project.
As indicated in USAID and PEPFAR documents – and even admitted to in documentation produced by CRS – the promotion and distribution of contraception was a core component of DREAMS.
In fact, one of DREAMS’ stated objectives was to increase the contraceptive method mix among young women.
Another layer
The Great Commission (1868) by Romain Cazes, in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Paris
There are many, many more examples of the ways in which USAID has corrupted the morals of Catholic Relief Services and other related Catholic institutions, but these examples suffice to adequately make the point: Taking government money will always come with strings attached requiring moral compromises.
But there is another layer to the problem that is often overlooked by those concerned with Catholic entanglement with US federal funding.
No matter where CRS operates, it is strictly forbidden from actively practicing the Faith in federally funded project areas.
The entire mission of the Catholic Church is summed up in the Great Commission given by Our Lord to His Apostles:
“Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world” (Mt. 28:19-20).
The Catholic Church exists for the salvation of souls, or as Archbishop Fulton Sheen put it, “If souls are not saved, then nothing is saved.”
The corporal works of mercy ostensibly performed by CRS and other groups are all for nothing if CRS fails to provide spiritual aid and nourishment to those souls it serves. It merits nothing to feed the belly and starve the soul.
The Department of Justice clearly stipulates that “Federal funding cannot fund ‘inherently religious’ activities.”
Explaining what this means, the DoJ says:
- Funds may NOT pay for religious worship, prayer, instruction, or evangelism.
- But ALL of these activities can be carried out with private funds.
In other words… “No God-Talk on Uncle Sam’s Dime.”
Conclusion
The late Pope Benedict XVI
Since USAID and PEPFAR irrefutably integrate population control and artificial birth control into nearly all aspects of their programs, they most certainly constitute what Pope Benedict XVI called “institutions that pursue ends contrary to the Church’s teaching.”
As such, CRS and other formal Catholic agencies are forbidden from taking their funds.
Furthermore, as has been shown, CRS’s decades-long addiction to federal funding has corrupted its moral character by making it complicit in the promotion and distribution of contraception and condoms.
The only answer to the magnitude of this corruption is to strictly follow the law established by Pope Benedict, stripping away all connection to USAID, PEPFAR, the Global Fund, the Gates Foundation, and any other such agency promoting and/or distributing contraception and condoms.
Charity is a virtue that belongs to the Church and it is high time She reclaimed that which is rightfully Hers.
*Michael Hichborn, founder and president of the Lepanto Institute, was previously American Life League’s Director of the Defend the Faith project, and helped open two Catholic schools in Fredericksburg, VA. Michael holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Christendom College in Political Science and Economics, and a Master’s degree in Education from American Intercontinental University. He is a member of the John Paul II Academy for Human Life and the Family, and lives in Virginia with his wife, Alyssa, and their eight children.
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