Catholic Charities agencies across country cut funding, lay off staff amid funding freeze

Madalaine Elhabbal By Madalaine Elhabbal for CNA

February 19, 2025 Catholic News Agency News Briefs 7 Print

 

Immigrants at Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley humanitarian respite center in McAllen, Texas. / Credit: Vic Hinterlang/Shutterstock

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Feb 19, 2025 / 17:40 pm (CNA).

Local Catholic Charities agencies across the country are being forced to lay off staff and weigh shutting down programs in the wake of the Trump administration’s 90-day federal funding freeze.

Upon taking office last month, President Donald Trump issued directives that, among other measures, paused grants to organizations that aid migrants and refugees.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), on Feb. 18 filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over what the bishops say is an unlawful suspension of funding for refugee programs in the United States, many of which are run by Catholic Charities.

Catholic Charities Santa Rosa: Aid for legal migrants cut

Last week Catholic Charities for the Diocese of Santa Rosa, California became one of the first local agencies to comment publicly on the impact of the Trump administration’s funding freeze on its services for legal immigrants, noting that funding for its citizenship classes had been cut off.

Jennielynn Holmes, a spokesperson for Catholic Charities Santa Rosa, told CNA that on Feb. 4, the agency received a four-sentence email from the Grants Branch Chief of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Mary Jane Sommerville, informing them their funding had been revoked.

According to Holmes, the freeze suspended nearly $500,000 in expected reimbursements from the federal government. The move, she said, was “unprecedented.”

“We’ve never had this happen before in any funding stream, but definitely not mid-contract year,” she said.

The email, reviewed by CNA, states, “Pursuant to the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s memorandum dated January 28, 2025, and effective immediately, your grant from the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services is frozen.”

“We recognize this will have an impact on your organization. We are unable to provide a timeline on this freeze,” the email added.

“I think what was most alarming to us was who these services were for,” said Holmes. “These services were not for individuals who were undocumented. These were for individuals who are legally here [who] did everything right in a very broken immigration system.”

“They did everything right,” she continued, “and now, in an indirect way, they are being targeted through this loss of funding.”

Catholic Charities in Santa Rosa’s immigration center provides citizenship classes and naturalization legal services to aid legal migrants through the process of becoming U.S. citizens. The center has nine Board of Immigration Appeals accredited staff, according to Holmes, who also said there are about 20-30 people enrolled in citizenship classes and several hundred more who are working through various stages of the naturalization process.

Holmes told CNA the agency has no plans to stop providing its services, despite the funding freeze.

Santa Rosa is currently working to apply for funding through the state of California after lawmakers set aside $50 million for different initiatives, including those that serve migrants. “We’re hopeful that we might be able to apply for some of those funds,” Holmes said, noting that the organization is in touch with state policymakers.

Catholic Charities in Syracuse cuts jobs

According to a local report, a local Catholic Charities in Syracuse, New York recently slashed 51 jobs from its refugee resettlement program after the Trump administration blocked $1.7 million in government grants it was set to receive this year.

The Onondaga County Catholic Charities refugee program specifically assists migrants when they first arrive in the U.S., providing grants for food and housing, as well as job assistance in their first 90 days stateside.

“Catholic Charities provides support for refugees the moment they arrive in Syracuse, connecting refugees to education, housing, jobs, English language class, health care, and more,” the program website states. “Programs for children and youth help young refugees acclimate and find success.”

Catholic Charities Dallas: nearly 60 employees laid off

According to a local NBC News report, Catholic Charities Dallas was forced to lay off 59 of its employees after federal funding for its refugee program was suspended last month.

The program, which is almost entirely funded by the State Department, serves documented migrants in North Texas. The program recently received roughly 180 migrant families, which it must seek alternative funding to support, the report said.

Iraqi and Afghan refugees who aided the U.S. government overseas are among the program’s beneficiaries, according to the program website.

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News Briefs

Kansas clergy sex abuse investigation reports 188 clergy members suspected of crimes

January 11, 2023 Catholic News Agency 4
The Cathedral of Saint Peter in Kansas City, Kansas, located in the Diocese of Kansas City, which was one of the four dioceses named in the state’s clergy abuse investigation. / Mwkruse|Wikimedia|CC BY-SA 4.0

Boston, Mass., Jan 11, 2023 / 10:35 am (CNA).

Kansas authorities investigating clerical sex abuse have identified 188 Catholic and Society of St. Pius X clergy members who are suspected of committing various crimes, according to a report released following a four-year-long investigation.

No charges have resulted from the investigation because the statute of limitations on the cases has expired or the accused priests are deceased.

The Society of St. Pius X, commonly referred to as the SSPX, is a traditionalist group, founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1970, which has an irregular canonical status. The group is not overseen by the Catholic Church or any diocese within the Catholic Church.

The identities of the priests were not revealed in the report, which said that the investigation’s scope spanned from 1950–2022. It is not clear how many of the accused were Catholic clergy and how many were SSPX clergy.

Melissa Underwood, communications director for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI) told CNA she did not have information on the division of allegations.

The report says that 125 criminal cases were initiated and 30 charging affidavits were distributed to prosecutors. A charging affidavit lays out the essential facts of the alleged offense by the perpetrator.

However, no prosecutor has filed charges against a clergy member as of Jan. 10, Underwood said. 

“In nearly all cases involving those offending priests, the statute of limitations had expired or the priest was no longer living. Both situations prevented prosecution of the offending priests,” the report says.

The report said that the 30 charging affidavits involved 14 priests. Clergy sexual abuse occurred in all four Catholic dioceses of Kansas, which includes the Archdiocese of Kansas City, the Diocese of Salina, the Diocese of Wichita, and the Diocese of Dodge City. 

Allegations were also brought against the SSPX, which was added to the investigation in 2019, as well as a Capuchin order of priests that operates within Kansas dioceses. The report did not name the Capuchin province. 

The report did, however, mention an encounter at a Colorado ranch run by the Franciscan Capuchin province “where multiple offender priests reside.”

“Our agents were met by staff who informed the priests why the KBI was there. The priests declined to meet with the KBI agents. Therefore, there was no access to those priests for questioning,” the report said. 

The report found “many of the same issues reported by the 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury investigation that related to the Church’s handling of abuse allegations were, in general, identified and documented in the KBI investigation as well.”

Certain Church practices and circumstances “served to obscure the truth about both the allegations of child abuse and sexual assault and their handling of such allegations,” the report said. 

The report gave nine examples of challenges that the KBI faced in its investigation.

  1. Some victims had signed nondisclosure agreements with the Church in a civil lawsuit and “were reluctant” to provide information. 

  2. The priests or victims had died in many cases. 

  3. Church officials would often use euphemisms to minimize the severity of sexual abuse by clergy.

  4. Allegations of sexual abuse would sometimes not be reported to law enforcement by Church officials.

  5. Parishioners were not offered transparency from the Church on sexual abuse.

  6. Dioceses did not practice good record-keeping. The deletion of documents related to sexual abuse, whether intentional or unintentional, resulted. 

  7. Diocesan investigations into past sex abuse allegations were insufficient.

  8. Each diocese failed to follow its own policy on sex abuse allegations of the clergy.

  9. Church officials “frequently attempted to avoid scandal” and would not take action against offending clergy. The Church would move offending priests to different assignments, continue its financial support of the priest, fail to laicize the priest, and fail to monitor the priest.

The report said that the “investigation found a common thread regarding the prevalence of sexual abuse at the hands of clergy within a particular diocese in that it appears to be directly related to the degree of tolerance allowed by the bishop.”

The bishop was made aware of sex abuse allegations “to at least some degree” in most cases, the report said. 

“Some bishops handled the allegations appropriately, but many others facilitated further abuse of minors by concealing the crimes or reassigning the priest to a new parish,” the report said.

The report said that priests would often use their position of authority to discourage the victim from reporting them. 

“Several victims relayed accounts of being told that what was happening to them was okay because he was a priest. At least one victim reported being told by his offender that if he told anyone he would go to hell,” the report said.

The long-term effect of the abuse on the victims was also detailed in the report.

“Throughout the investigation, our team heard from many victims who attributed their alcohol or drug abuse, or their ‘wrecked lives,’ to the sexual abuse they endured,” the report said.

The report said that a few of the victims interviewed were in prison and partly attributed their incarceration to their abuse from the clergy. In certain cases where the victims of sexual abuse had committed suicide, the family of the victims said that they believed the victim’s death was directly correlated to the abuse.

“Our agents witnessed men, now in their 60s and 70s, break down in tears as they reported their sexual abuse to our team,” the report said.

According to the report, the SSPX investigation will continue. 

The investigation began in November 2018 at the request of Archbishop Joseph Naumann of the Archdiocese of Kansas City. 

A Jan. 7 statement from the Archdiocese of Kansas City said: “The archbishop expressed his gratitude to the Kansas attorney general for the professionalism and thoroughness he and the Kansas Bureau of Investigation brought to the study.”

Naumann said in the statement: “You cannot read this report without your heart breaking.”

“Like other dioceses across the country, the dioceses in Kansas have for some 20+ years implemented programs to protect children and vulnerable adults in its parishes and schools, and the report indicates a steep decline in allegations in recent decades,” the statement said.

“But the most significant change Archbishop Naumann has introduced locally has been adopting a victim-centered approach using restorative principles to address the grave harm of abuse. He prays these efforts will be successful and provide a new avenue to bring healing to victims in the future,” the statement said.

The full statement can be read here. 

If you are aware of abuse or neglect, a report can be made to the Kansas Protection Report Center at 800-922-5330. If you are aware of abuse by a cleric or someone employed by the archdiocese, regardless of when the abuse happened, the archdiocese has a confidential report line that can be contacted at 913-647-3051.

One can also make a report online using this link.

[…]

7 Comments

  1. What did Catholic Charities do for the people of North Carolina?

    “Catholic Charities” concentrated on immigrants and ILLEGAL ALIENS because it was paid to do so- proving the adage “he who has [dispenses] the gold makes the rules.

    Reply

  2. That is VERY GOOD NEWS.

    These Catholic Charities organizations that take tens, if not hubdreds, of millions of dollars from taxpayers in the form of governmental contracts are nothing more than quasi political organizations and fronts for the Democrat Party. Never again should the Catholic Church be under contract and receive monies from the Federal government. If thw Catholic Church wants to do immigration work with illegals, they should use money velonging to the Church and not the American taxpayer

    As far as the USCCB suing the government, I will be happy to remind the bishops that the government as defendant can use discovery to go through the financial records of every diocese for full accountability for monies provided Church entities. Don’t be surprised if, in the end, the Church has to reimburse the government tens of millions of dollars. I just hope dioceses under cobtract with the Feds go bankrupt.

    Reply

        • Yes, because they are only rich on paper. They are doing a great service to this country and deserve to keep all of our tax dollars for themselves.

          Reply

      • Elon is doing the job UNPAID. In addition, last time he was President, Trump donated his entire salary as President to a variety of charities. Nothing has been said this time but I would hazard a guess he is doing that again. I guess they never told you that on CNN or MSNBC. (Just like they never revealed Biden”s falls and verbal gaffs until it could no longer be hidden, which FOX viewers had known about for years.)

        Further, even if they WERE getting paid for their work, America has ALWAYS been all about Capitalism. If you find that something to oppose, you are in the wrong country, doll. Might I suggest China, Russia, Cuba, or North Korea might be more to your liking???

        Reply

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