Trafficking, illegal immigration and the Catholic Church

February 11, 2022

Over the course of the last 15 years, I have been researching, analyzing, and reporting on organizations claiming to be Catholic that are doing distinctly un-Catholic things. Through that time, I've written hundreds of reports on the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, dozens of reports on Catholic Relief Services, and a few on Catholic Charities.

As I have done this research, one of the questions that stuck in the back of my mind was "Why in the world are these Catholic agencies so interested in peddling contraception?" While I could attribute an ideological notion to the problem ... some Catholics just don't accept the Church's teaching on contraception ... this assessment falls flat when we consider that the defenses of this promotion don't come in the form of defending the action but denying that it ever happened at all.

Very infrequently, and only after an immense amount of pressure is brought to bear on those in charge of these various Catholic institutions, do we see any kind of admission that there is even a problem. But whether it is the CCHD, CRS, or some other entity claiming the name "Catholic," the theme of the promotion of contraception eventually finds its way through.

On a seemingly unrelated note, we have been asked for some time to report on the work of Catholic Charities as they assist in bringing illegal immigrants into the United States. In 2017, I gave a talk to a group in Virginia on the USCCB's budget items, showing that by far its largest source of income from the federal government came in the form of "immigrant and refugee resettlement," which translates as helping illegals into the United States. You can view that talk here.

As this was mostly a political matter, and a difficult thing to address from a moral standpoint or from a matter of Catholic teaching, I have tried to stay out of the issue in particular. Not because a moral or Catholic teaching case couldn't be made against it, but because building that case would require time and attention I didn’t have.

But then the McCarrick revelations of 2018 came out, and then the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report was published. And for the first time, a concern that had been gnawing at the back of my mind started to come to light: What if the Church's promotion of contraception and the work to move illegals was a connected matter? One of the stories from the Grand Jury Report that stood out to me was the network of homosexual abusers that actually trafficked young boys. And then it clicked: McCarrick was deeply involved in Catholic Relief Services, regularly flying to known hot spots where young boys were trafficked for sexual abuse. A year later, it was discovered that Fr. Luke Delft, Caritas' director for Central Africa, was known as a sexual abuser by the president of Caritas, Cdl. Louis Tagle, and the Secretary General of Caritas, and yet, he was directly placed in a role where he would have direct interactions with children. You can view this report here.

So, the question remains ... what is the connection between the promotion of contraception, the sex abuse crisis in the Church, and the movement of illegals? Our good friends at Complicit Clergy put together a devastating 17 minute video that may provide the answer, and it is one that no one wants to consider: Catholic Charities (and possibly other Catholic aid agencies) very well may be involved as an accomplice in the sexual trafficking of children.

Describing the situation, Complicit Clergy wrote:

"The Catholic Church is facilitating illegal immigration on both sides of the US-Mexico border using our hard-earned tax dollars. The Church has received over $2 billion dollars in federal grants since 2012, a large portion of which has gone to fund the resettlement of illegal aliens in our nation.
In doing so, the Church has become an accomplice to criminal cartels involved in human trafficking, drug smuggling and terrorist activities. Organizations like Catholic Charities have effectively become complicit in the crimes of the cartels."

As more and more revelations come to light, the picture becomes even more clear. But there is still much that needs to be discovered before we can be certain of what looks like a human trafficking situation involving these social justice outlets.

Please take a moment to go to Complicit Clergy's video page addressing this horrific situation and follow their recommendations to "Take Action."

Thanks to your dedicated effort to pressure the CCHD to publish its most recent grants list, the 2020-2021 list of CCHD grantees was finally published yesterday! Please understand, we could NOT have gotten this done without your dedicated help in forcing the CCHD's hand.

We've already begun scouring the list of grantees and identified over a dozen organizations that we know we've reported on before, and we've also fought a couple of new ones as well.

As promised, we will be investigating the entire list of CCHD grantees and sending our full report and analysis to every bishop in the country. Please pray for us as we conduct this work!

Some other headlines you may have missed:

As always, please pray for the Church, for our bishops, priests, deacons, and for Lepanto's mission as we continue to unearth the truth and "restore all things to Christ." (Col. 1:20)

Christus Vincit!

Michael Hichborn
President
Lepanto Insititute