Thirty Pieces of Silver

The Catholic Church was fully aware of the billions in taxpayer funds pouring into Catholic Charities from our government. They also knew how the money was used.

As many of you know, we’ve written a number of times how our State Department and USAID drove huge numbers of illegal crossings using vast sums of taxpayer money. We’re grateful to see this issue getting the broader attention that it truly deserves. Regardless of what you think about him, Elon is helping to raise our national consciousness on a number of vital matters—including the use of NGOs to fund the flow of illegals.

One of the questions we've repeatedly been asked during this process is did the Catholic Church know what NGOs like Catholic Charities of America were doing? Was the Catholic Church part of the illegal immigration problem, actively soliciting government funds or were these sub-organizations operating all on their own—independent grifters operating outside the Church’s sphere in an attempt to make money.

Our historical response to these questions has been that at a minimum the Church certainly had active knowledge of these activities - and documents we’ve found would strongly indicate the Church had a very real measure of oversight. Most of these donations went to Catholic Charities directly affiliated with regional dioceses—making it improbable that the Church wasn’t overtly aware.

Unfortunately, we now have what appears to be a fairly definitive answer to this question. As you’ll see, it was one that left us at a loss for words. But first some important context and background.

The following tables come from FEMA’s website under their “Shelter and Services Program.” Contained within the grant details are page after page of funding awards - with a large number of the awards repeatedly going to Catholic Charities of America and their sub organizations.

The grants were not limited to FEMA. This same pattern of grants to Catholic Charities was repeated wherever we found significant amounts of funding for these NGOs—primarily at the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) and USAID.

The Heritage Foundation's Mike Howell noted that all of these NGOs were also “involved in lobbying the Biden administration and our Congress to keep the border wide open. And so it's kind of this full scale operation where not only they're involved in the border, but they're involved in D.C. making sure the border stays open through policy and support to the Biden administration.”

To be fair, the Catholic Church certainly did not act alone. As Todd Bensman detailed, “The UN has entrusted faith-based establishment NGOs with handling a lot of the $372 million in “Cash and Voucher Assistance” and “Multipurpose Cash Assistance”. Bensman identified “more than 30 faith-based nonprofits among those UN NGO partners — representing Jewish, Lutheran, Seventh Day Adventist, Catholic, and nondenominational evangelical organizations.” As Bensman noted, our State Department and USAID were “mainlining taxpayer funds to these groups.”

All of that said, the Catholic Church appears to have been one of the biggest players. Howell purposefully singled out the Catholic Church’s activities, noting that “Catholic charities are a prime example. They're really the 800 pound gorilla when it comes to this. They are deeply involved in facilitating the travel of illegal aliens throughout the country.”

When we ran a search for Catholic Charities using Data Republican’s tool, we came up with an astonishing figure of $1,444,792,097.87 in federal grants. Line item after line item of enormous grants from the federal government to various Catholic Charity outlets.

The search engine built by Data Republican limits out at 100 results. The returns were all populated with hits on Catholic Charities so the $1.4 billion number is likely incomplete. You can try it for yourself here.

All of this brings us to an astonishing open letter sent on January 31, 2025 by Bishop Joseph Strickland, who used President Trump’s funding freeze as an opportunity to call out the Catholic Church—along with protests from the impacted charities.

We intuitively knew it was bad. We didn’t know it was this bad. Some quotes from Bishop Strickland’s letter:

"Today, about two thirds of Catholic Charities’ annual spending comes from government sources, which totals more than half a billion dollars of federal grants alone. Spokespersons for the organization as well as various bishops are protesting this freeze, stating that Catholic Charities does good work and performs many works of charity.

However, the fact is that it has been known for some time that Catholic Charities is involved in funding immoral and even potentially illegal activities as far as the immigration laws of this country are concerned, and that in fact their activities have in many cases hurt rather than helped vulnerable populations.”

"One of the greatest concerns about these funds having been used for illegal immigration resettlement activities is that not only has this served to bring many criminals into our country who have the potential to harm citizens, but in many cases these activities have served to place very vulnerable people, especially a great number of children, at risk to be abused and exploited.”

It gets worse:

“As we learn more about this situation with the bishops and Catholic Charities, it is becoming evident that in many cases children have not been adequately safeguarded from potential exploitation including human trafficking.

In fact, many bishops—and in some cases the very bishops who are protesting the freezing of funds—have had a very poor record of safeguarding children in recent times. And as much as it fills me with dismay to have to say this, there is good reason to suspect that some of the American bishops have contributed to, rather than safeguarded against, the exploitation of these children who have been brought into our country illegally.”

Strickland notes the goal of many of these Catholic Charities, redistributive Marxism:

"Many in the current climate in the Church would argue that bringing poor immigrants into the country and allowing them access to services funded by American taxpayers is a just way to “redistribute the wealth"

And the financial payoff that followed:

“It is a fact that bringing illegal foreign nationals to the country and the attempts to resettle them while sidestepping immigration law has brought great sums of money into the hands of these many bishops who now protest [Trump’s funding freeze] so loudly, and who are in reality present-day Judases who stand with outstretched hands for the thirty pieces of silver.”

The letter from Bishop Joseph E. Strickland can be found here.

It now seems certain beyond doubt. The Catholic Church was fully aware of the billions pouring into Catholic Charities from our State Department, USAID & FEMA.They not only gladly accepted the money, they did nothing to safeguard those they were supposed to shepherd, causing immense harm to millions in the process.

h/t to @MarkDries1 for posting us on the Bishop’s letter