Groups of migrants wait outside the Migrant Resource Center in San Antonio, Texas, to receive food from the San Antonio Catholic Charities in a file photo from Sept.19, 2022. (Jordan Vonderhaar / Getty Images)
By Ole Braatelien February 16, 2025 at 6:00am
Catholic Charities USA raked in billions of taxpayer dollars to shelter illegal immigrants during the Biden administration, according to a Just the News report published Tuesday.
Over the last four years, the organization collected more than $2 billion in federal grants intended for immigration-related programs, Just the News reported, citing data from USASpending.gov.
The exorbitant sum makes Catholic Charities, with its 168 U.S. branches, one of the largest private recipients of such funding, which helped shelter and relocate illegals.
Catholic Charities’ main donor was the Department of Health and Human Services, which granted the organization roughly $1.93 billion, according to the report.
Other donors included the Department of Homeland Security, which forked over more than $156 million, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development: $138 million.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency also donated to the Catholic volunteer organization, though the report didn’t cite how much.
However, FEMA has faced scrutiny from Republicans in recent months regarding its misallocation of taxpayer dollars toward immigration.
In October 2024, following Hurricanes Helene and Milton, the House Committee on Homeland Security sent a letter to Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas regarding his comments a week prior that FEMA did “not have the funds, to make it through the [hurricane] season.”
The letter went on to say that the reason FEMA didn’t have the funds was that it had depleted them on illegal immigration programs.
Do you think Francis defended illegals knowing that the church would make money off of them?
Just the News cited other instances in which Catholic Charities’ subsidiary offices received mountainous sums of cash for immigration programs during the Biden administration.
“For many local chapters, these new funds dwarfed the previous grants they had been awarded in previous years,” the news outlet wrote.
In fiscal year 2021, for example, the Diocese of Fort Worth in Texas received $11.7 million in grants.
But by FY 2023, that sum exploded to $401.7 million — most of it reserved for the “Refugee and Entrant Assistance” program.
Just the News reached out to Catholic Charities USA, but had not received a comment at the time of publication.
The report comes in the wake of recent remarks by Pope Francis condemning President Donald Trump’s mass deportation of illegals.
In a Monday letter addressed to U.S. Bishops, Pope Francis laid out the Catholic Church’s stance on the immigration issue.
“One must recognize the right of a nation to defend itself and keep communities safe from those who have committed violent or serious crimes while in the country or prior to arrival,” Francis wrote.
“That said, the act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness,” he wrote.
U.S. Border Czar Tom Homan gave reporters his response to the pope’s letter.
“He wants to attack us for securing our border? He’s got a wall around the Vatican, does he not?” Homan said.
“So he’s got a wall around that protects his people and himself, but we can’t have a wall around the United States?”
Ole Braatelien has written for The Western Journal since 2022. He earned his bachelor’s from ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
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