Catholic Charities USA (CCU), the largest social safety net provider in the country outside the federal government, has received nearly $1 billion from taxpayers via the Biden administration to facilitate illegal immigration.

Financial documents for show that government grants for the domestic charity wing of the U.S. Catholic Church nearly quadrupled since Biden took office in 2021, with most of the funds directed to the charity’s immigration services — especially its operations near the southern U.S. border.

According to an audit report published in June 2024, Catholic Charities of Fort Worth (CCFW) was awarded the role of serving as the lead contractor for the entire state of Texas by the Office of Refugee Settlement of the U.S. Department of Housing and Human Services, and has done so from 2021 to now.

Under the arrangement, all federal grants for the state to be disbursed as cash payments to illegal migrants would be given to the charity, which could decide who the recipients would be. Since 2022, CCFW has received more than $800 million from the Biden administration.

Huge Pallets of Cash

Under this scheme, called Refugee Cash Assistance, illegal aliens can receive payments of up to $685 per month and incentive bonuses for getting or keeping a job for certain periods of time. They also can get up to 100% of medical expenses paid for doctor visits, hospitalization, prescription medications, and emergency services.

According to its 2020 990 form, CCFW gave over $25 million that year alone to the International Rescue Committee (IRC), which already receives around $1 billion a year from the federal government and is partly sponsored by George Soros and Bill Gates to help migrants “become permanent residents and US citizens.”

Ironically, since 2018, IRC has received $5,563,174 in grants from George Soros’s Open Society Foundations and $5,870,496 from the left-of-center Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, according to charity watchdog Influence Watch, which spotlights the collusion between CCU and pro-open borders activist organizations.

In 2020, CCFW gave more than $13 million to Refugee Services of Texas (RST), the state’s largest resettlement agency. The NGO shut down in 2023 after 45 years due to a budget crisis and financial mismanagement. In 2021, RST received more $19 million in federal funding.

Hundreds of Millions for Illegals

In 2018, Catholic Charities of Galveston-Houston received $44 million from the Trump administration. By 2021, funding for the charity had skyrocketed to $217 million under the Biden-Harris regime, which is reflected on its 990 for the period between July 1, 2022 and June 30, 2023.

While the Trump administration gave CCFWh, $31 million in 2019, the charity won a bonanza of $146 million from the Biden administration in 2022, with then-CEO Christopher Plumlee earning an annual salary of $294,608. Plumlee was fired by Bishop Michael Olsen just nine months on the job for infidelity to Catholic teaching.

In May, Catholic Charities San Antonio, which operates the Centro de Bienvenida Migrant Resource Center, was awarded $10.9 million as part of a federal spending package that also included $3 million for the City of San Antonio and $2.4 million for the San Antonio Food Bank to serve the center.

Catholic Charities San Antonio Executive Director Antonio Fernandez said the center would not bring back its program of paying for plane and bus tickets for illegal migrants, which it ended to reduce expenses.

In the spring of 2022, New York City funneled $6.8 million into Catholic Charities of New York to launch “a first-of-its-kind Asylum Seeker Navigation Center.”

The majority of CCU’s operations are conducted through contracts with state and local governments, causing one critic to call it “an arm of the welfare state.”

Influence Watch has accused CCU of supporting mostly left-leaning welfare expansionist policies, including state-subsidized housing, subsidies and tax credits for families, universal pre-K education, expansion of food stamps, expanded Medicare, liberal migration policies, and the permanent establishment of the Universal Charitable Deduction.

A Charity That Acts Like a Political Lobby

In June 2020, CCU issued a statement announcing that it “strongly opposes” the Trump administration’s proposed asylum rule “that would impose tremendous obstacles on migrants seeking safety and protection in the U.S.”

“The proposed changes would make the legal pursuit of asylum unacceptably narrow. Our major concerns include: broadening the discretionary reasons to deny an asylum claim, redefining a ‘particular social group’ and potentially limiting due process. The proposed rule fails to protect human dignity.”

Nearly 25 years ago, Patrick Johnson, director of Hartford, Connecticut’s Catholic Charities agency, enthused: “We have one of the largest social-justice advocacy programs in the country, with a lobbyist on staff, actively lobbying the state legislature in the area of welfare reform, against the death penalty, juvenile justice — the social-services agenda, if you will.

“Charity is never enough; you have to do other stuff,” he declared.

CCU is proud of this. The “Immigration Services” section of its website boasts,

Every two years, after a new Congress is seated, CCUSA’s Social Policy Team crafts legislative priorities and recommendations based on the ongoing efforts of the Catholic Charities network of agencies and the needs of the vulnerable populations Catholic Charities serves.

In a 2023 booklet titled “Legislative Priorities for the 118th Congress,” CCU urges Congress to “provide permanent legal status and a pathway to citizenship for all essential workers, including frontline healthcare and agricultural workers, DREAMERS, and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) holders.”

It also asks Congress to “provide adequate funding” for 2024 to “return the number of refugee admissions and resettlement to at least the historical average of 95,000.”

Losing Its Catholic Soul but Targeting Catholic Donors

The organization has been fiercely criticized over decades for its capitulation to the Marxist-based worldview of Liberation Theology, encouraged in the decades that followed the Second Vatican Council.

In a searing 2000 article for the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, political analyst Dr. Brian C. Anderson lamented that CCU had “rejected its long-standing emphasis on personal responsibility and self-reliance and began to blame capitalist society rather than individual behavior for poverty and crime.”

Catholic Charities “has become over the last three decades an arm of the welfare state, with 65 percent of its $2.3 billion annual budget now flowing from government sources and little that is explicitly religious, or even values-laden, about most of the services its 1,400 member agencies and 46,000 paid employees provide,” he wrote.

Anderson blasted CCU as “one of the nation’s most powerful advocates for outworn welfare-state ideas, especially the idea that social and economic forces over which the individual has no control, rather than his own attitudes and behavior, are the reason for poverty.”

Despite its massive government funding, CCU continues to target parishioners in the pews with repeated and urgent appeals for donations to help address the needs of immigrants and refugees, notably along the U.S.-Mexico border.

An appeal issued last month said that “100% of your donation will help our agencies along the border … and ensure that children are being treated with care and kindness. Without additional funding, Catholic Charities agencies struggle to meet the growing needs of the migrant crisis.”

Executives Receive Fat-Cat Salaries

In 2019, Catholic Charities paid its president $521,554 and its CFO $310,000, according to Forbes. In comparison, four-star generals in the U.S. military earn $268,344 a year.

More recently, the Salary.com website reported that the optimal compensation range for a president and CEO at CCU is between $640,308 and $1,075,827, with an average annual salary of $842,554.

Meanwhile, Catholic Charities of Galveston-Houston has advertised several positions dealing with immigrant services over the last month, including a Refugee Resettlement Case Manager, a Lead Case Manager for Family Reunification, and a Refugee Resettlement Employee Specialist.

Similar jobs are also advertised by Catholic Charities Dallas, including a Case Manager for Immigration Legal Services.  

Pope Francis Backs U.S. Bishops’ Open Borders Activism

The USCCB candidly admits on its website that it “engages with the federal appropriations process to obtain the maximum amount of funding needed to support the U.S. refugee program, which provides both overseas assistance and resettlement services to refugees.”

Each year, it advocates for “funding levels that maximize the number of refugees assisted overseas and resettled in the U.S., and that provide resettlement agencies sufficient resources to serve refugees in a comprehensive manner,” it states while appealing to private donors.

In February, the USCCB wrote to Senate leaders expressing “serious concerns” about the government’s new bipartisan border deal, urging them to reject portions that would “further restrict access to asylum.”

“Rather than sustainably reducing migration to the U.S.-Mexico border, consistent with the common good and the good-faith intentions of many lawmakers,” wrote pro-migrant lead author Bishop Mark Seitz, the bill would “pave the way for avoidable and potentially life-threatening harm to be inflicted on vulnerable persons seeking humanitarian protection in the United States.”

A few weeks ago, while addressing his general audience, Pope Francis declared opposition to mass immigration a “grave sin” and called for a “global governance of migration,” even as Italy’s bishops defied Italian law by financing a ship ferrying illegal immigrants in the Mediterranean. The government is trying to stem the migrant invasion through stricter policies.

But the pontiff warned that “restrictive laws” and the “militarization of borders” would not help curb the tidal wave of illegal immigrants, who are predominantly Muslim men of military age flooding into Europe from Africa and Asia.

Francis called for “extending safe and legal access routes for migrants, providing refuge for those who flee from war, violence, persecution and various disasters” and “promoting in every way a global governance of migration based on justice, fraternity and solidarity.”

 

Dr. Jules Gomes, (BA, BD, MTh, PhD), has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.