Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Mar 15, 2025 / 08:00 am (CNA).
Former president and CEO of Catholic Relief Services (CRS) Carolyn Woo is speaking out in defense of the aid organization amid Trump administration funding cuts to its services internationally.
“International aid was started at first for the benefit of the U.S. even though the aid goes overseas,” Woo said during an appearance on “EWTN News In Depth” Friday evening, arguing that international aid to organizations like CRS is important “for two major reasons”: security and prosperity.
Woo led CRS from 2012 to 2016. The organization’s current president and CEO is Sean Callahan.
“Security is achieved when countries are working well,” she said. “There are not as many incidences of conflicts or terrorism. In addition to that, it also allows us to have understanding and intelligence from that area.”
In terms of prosperity, Woo argued that most economic and population growth occurs in developing countries, which she predicted “will become very important markets for the United States,” for exports, precious minerals, food, and other goods. “When we invest in these other countries, we’re actually investing in the base that allows all of us to grow,” she said.
Addressing President Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Woo argued for the restoration of federal aid to CRS, stating: “It’s the best investment you could make in the United States in terms of security, in terms of prosperity, but most important in terms of trust. And trust is a very important capital that we don’t have.”
Woo’s statements come after the U.S. bishops issued a “very urgent” appeal earlier this week for Catholics to contribute to this year’s annual CRS collection.
“Each year the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) comforts and assists people worldwide who suffer from war, natural disasters, violent persecution, or extreme poverty,” the bishops said in a Monday statement.
“That work is possible because of contributions to the Catholic Relief Services Collection,” they said.
CRS has been scrambling for funding since the Trump administration in January ordered major cuts to foreign aid and refugee programs. The USCCB previously urged Catholics to take action by asking members of Congress to halt the cuts.
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The Catholic Church I belong to is NOT just another NGO funneling money into the pockets of leftist social injustice causes.
The Catholic Church’s contracting with the Federal government to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars is a disgrace and a scandal.
If the Catholic Church is going to do charity work (which it should), it should use its own money and not the money of taxpayers without their approval.
Charity done with other people’s money is NO CHARITY AT ALL.
The Church needs to get out of bed with government bureaucrats; it is unseemly.
Catholic people interested in following Jesus should absolutely cease supporting the McCarrick Establishment, which includes theUSCCB, Catholic Relief Services and Catholic Charities, which are all nothing more than agencies of the global left establishment, of which the McCarrick Establishment is functioning as a financial network.
These are shadow leftist government agencies that must be defunded and audited for fraud and abuse, their presidents and CFOs and CEOs investigated for criminal behavior, and then spun off directly where they belong: to the atheistic Soros conglomerate.
Brilliantly put, Chris in Maryland!
It’s high time that the United States stopped being treated like an ATM machine.
Ms. Woo has held various board positions on various types of organizations. She has been a board member for at least one large energy conglomerate. Then explain her solidarity with Vatican Dialogue on Energy Transition?
How does support of climate-change strategies align with assisting refugees and migrants?
Ms. Woo is pictured beside the pope. https://theelders.org/news/fossil-fuel-and-finance-ceos-take-first-steps-climate-action-vatican-summit
She talks about trust. I don’t trust Catholic Relief Services. I lost that trust under her leadership.
Ms Woo loves Caesar’s coin, lives and breathes for Caesar’s coin.
She likely thinks CRS is entitled to and deserves taxpayer money. Woo was merely a contractor for Uncle Sam, nothing more.
Reality comes down hard on some people.
If Carolyn Woo is supposed to be convincing someone like me to to support Catholic Relief Services, forget it. She sounds like a devoted acolyte of the “use U.S taxpayer funds to pay other countries to like the United States” school of thought. Because ordinary Americans are supposed to be very interested in getting other countries to like us and trust us, because if they did, we would have much more “security and prosperity.” That type of fuzzy reasoning is a big part of how the organizational disaster called USAID took shape over decades.
So no sale. But I imagine the world of promoting international NGOs like Catholic Relief Services has been very good for Ms. Woo’s career and prospects.