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CV NEWS FEED // As federal funding was recently suspended from a sweeping number of organizations, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is calling for donations to the Catholic Relief Services (CRS) Collection, which will go toward five other Church-related entities along with CRS.
According to a March 10 USCCB press release, the CRS collection, held March 29-30 at many parishes, will also go toward the Secretariat of Cultural Diversity in the Church, the Secretariat of Justice and Peace, the Holy Father’s Relief Fund, the Migration and Refugee Services, and the Catholic Legal Immigration Network.
From 2013 to 2022, Catholic Relief Services was the largest recipient of funds from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), receiving a collective $4.6 billion within that timeframe, CatholicVote previously reported. The USCCB’s release states that in past years, the CRS collection has helped priests and religious from other countries come to the United States, assisted families to combat poverty, and provided pastoral training to Catholic leaders serving U.S.-based Asian and Pacific Island communities.
The Trump administration’s 90-day federal funding freeze for foreign aid has especially affected the USCCB’s refugee resettlement program, according to Bishop Daniel Mueggenborg, who is the chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on National Collections.
“Recently, the U.S. government abruptly suspended funding for its refugee resettlement program and then terminated cooperative agreements for such work, impacting thousands of refugees that the government has placed in the charge of the USCCB for resettlement assistance,” stated Bishop Mueggenborg in the press release. “With similarly abrupt stop-work orders on foreign humanitarian relief work, aid organizations such as Catholic Relief Services are unable to sustain their work overseas, bringing food, life-saving medicine, and daily necessities to people in need.”
The USCCB press release also states that “Each year the Conference spends more to support refugees than it receives from federal grants.”
Also due to the funding freeze, the USCCB and local partners have begun laying off employees, according to the press release. According to a March 10 report from 21 Alive News, Catholic Charities Fort Wayne-South Bend in Indiana recently laid off 20% of its workforce. The news outlet reported that the diocese assisted 380 refugees relocate to Indiana in 2024 and received $3 million for refugee services.
NBC San Diego reports that Catholic Charities Diocese of San Diego, which had been busing in around 400 asylum-seeking migrants per day, now only buses in a few people per week. The charity has had to lay off workers in its refugee services and migrant respite shelter. In a separate NBC San Diego report from March 11, Catholic Charities of San Diego provided aid for 405,000 migrants from 146 countries and received $9 million out of the federal funding budget of $46 million.
