Interference in another country's internal affairs?

Sure, if you're the Vatican, or more specifically, the Vatican's big umbrella NGO of NGOs known as Caritas, whose U.S. arms include Catholic Charities and Catholic Relief Services.

According to the Associated Press:

VATICAN CITY -- The Vatican's charity said Monday that U.S. plans to gut USAID were “reckless” and could kill millions, while Pope Francis’ point man on development urged the Trump administration to remember Christian principles about caring for others.

Cardinal Michael Czerny, a Czech-born Canadian Jesuit, is one of the cardinals most closely associated with Francis’ pontificate and heads the Vatican office responsible for migrants, the environment, the church’s Caritas Internationalis charity and development.

Caritas on Monday warned that millions of people could die as a result of the “ruthless” U.S. decision to “recklessly” stop USAID funding, and hundreds of millions more will be condemned to “dehumanizing poverty.”

That's a little close to micromanaging the U.S.'s policy decisions and criticizing its voters' choice of leader, President Trump, who by the way, took the majority of the Catholic vote.

And to claim the shutdown of USAID operations starve the poor is preposterous, given that most USAID cash goes to consultant contracts and NGOs who pay their executives six-figure salaries for non-poor things like DEI lessons for corporate giant Pepsico and transgender comic books to be published in Peru. USAID has been found to have paid for terrorist groups surrounding Israel, launched Sorosian color revolutions, and subsidized the ritzy-schmitzy very exclusive World Economic Forum for the world's elites in the Davos Swiss ski resort so they could promote the eating of bugs.

It certainly finances much of Catholic Charities which uses its cash to incentivize illegal immigration as well as to teach illegal immigants how to battle U.S. laws on immigration once they get in, the better to cut the immigration line ahead of others who would come legally. It also refuses to open its books to investigators in Texas.

How the heck does that feed and clothe anyone in a poor country?

It was obnoxious stuff because Czerny glossed over that Elon Musk's team, in its audit, found stunning examples of waste, corruption and mismanagement -- all of which ultimately came at the expense of the poor. Left unsaid is that if this bloated and corrupt agency is scrapped, the taxpayers who fund it will have more money to finance charities that do help the poor.

Czerny wasn't that bad in his interview with the Associated Press, but the entire premise of the complaint was problematic.

It was even possible to sympathize with him to some extent about getting aid cut off so suddenly.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Czerny said every incoming government has the right to review its foreign aid budget, and even to reform an agency like USAID. But he said it’s another thing to dismantle an agency after it has made funding commitments.

“There are programs underway and expectations and we might even say commitments, and to break commitments is a serious thing,” Czerny said Sunday. “So while every government is qualified to review its budget in the case of foreign aid, it would be good to have some warning because it takes time to find other sources of funding or to find other ways of meeting the problems we have.”

One of USAID’s biggest non-governmental recipients of funding is Catholic Relief Services, the aid agency of the Catholic Church in the U.S., which has already sounded the alarm about the cuts. Other programs, including Caritas international programs at the diocesan and national levels, are also being impacted directly or indirectly, Czerny said.

In a statement, Caritas asked governments to urgently call on the U.S. administration to reverse course. “Stopping USAID will jeopardize essential services for hundreds of millions of people, undermine decades of progress in humanitarian and development assistance, destabilize regions that rely on this critical support, and condemn millions to dehumanizing poverty or even death,” it said.

By essential services, does he mean green cards and free lawyers for illegals who already had a spare $12,000 to pay cartels for crossing into the U.S.? Free transport to their destination of choice, no ID needed? Free stays in five-star hotels? The free stuff of this kind serves as quite an incentive to come.

But even if what he is talking about is food and shelter alone, which is what he'd like the readers to think, it highlights that they are getting too much government money for their vast operations, which includes many executives on six-figure salaries, feathering their nests and living very, very well, much better than the taxpayers whose money they take.

Catholic organizations like Catholic Charities have as a result rapidly evolved into a political lobby and special interest, instead of an organization with any closeness to "the sheep" or Catholic faithful, who are secondary. That doesn't sound like a terribly Catholic setup actually. When you take the king's penny, you do the king's bidding.

I'm not going to claim, as some do, that Catholic Charities "profits" from illegal immigration, because I don't think they do. But like any NGO (just check out the homeless-industrial complext of San Francisco) they do have an interest in a bigger illegal immigration count, because the more illegal migrants, the bigger their budget and the greater the incoming cash from the government. The bigger the "need" the better the cash  -- to expand staff, increase salaries, build new buildings and expand influence into the political arena.

If the Cathlic NGOs don't have the cash of their own to pay for all they want to pay for with illegals, whether actual food and shelter, or all the fringe benefits, they need to ask themselves why the Catholic faithful aren't donating sufficiently and downsize their organizations accordingly.

Czerny should be aware that St. Katharine Drexel, a great 19th century and early 20th century mother superior, who had been a very rich and glamorous Philadephia main line debutante in her youth but gave it up to become a nun and donated her inheritance to doing good works for black and Native American people, knew all about the NGO and foundation world and refused to put her fortune in one of those. 

Here's a passage from Catholic Culture:

After St. Katharine Drexel founded her religious order, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, everyone around her urged her to set aside some of her annual income to set up a fund which would endow the order’s works after her death. It would have been easy for her to do so, and certainly the order would never have wanted for resources for a long time – for Mother Katharine was a millionaire who shared with her one living sister an annual income of about $750,000 from their father’s will.

Yet Katharine refused, opting rather to provide for present needs – to spend the money founding new schools and missions for Native Americans and African-Americans, and even to support other orders than her own in doing similar work. In a letter to one of her financial advisors, Fr. Dominic Pantanella, she wrote:

Now, whilst putting away such a sum as this [$1,020,000], think of the number of souls amongst the Colored and Indian that could be ministered to whilst hoarding up this money for endowment. Each soul that we might have come to rescue might in turn convert another soul & and think of the present good – the souls who may be lost while we are amassing a sum for future support of 4 Institutes containing 507 children. If these four Institutes of ours are good, God will provide for them if we on our part go forth to use all of our intelligence and means to bring the Indian & Colored to know, love & serve Him by all the ways in our power directly or indirectly. I firmly hold that it is the faithful who should be instrumental in maintaining for God His works. …

Well, that doesn't quite sound like the view from the Vatican, which actually seems to think the U.S. taxpayer money is their money and Bad President Trump took it away from them.

The Caritas chief's views are measured and he seems to admit USAID could be a pit of waste and fraud, but combined with all the other statements of outrage coming from both the pope (here's a new one) and the Catholic bishops, amounts to effectively telling the U.S. how it should spend its money, with the knowledge of the state $40 billion already taken in the backdrop.

Czerny even prescribes how much illegal immigration the U.S. should accept in contravention to its own laws in this part of the interview:

Francis has also said governments are expected to [take illegal immigrants] to the limits of their capacity.

“And I don’t think that is any country except perhaps Lebanon, and maybe one or two other exceptions, who are really over the limit,” Czerny said. “So I think it’s incumbent on us first of all as human beings, as citizens, as believers, and in our case, as Christians.”

He comes off as utterly out of touch, given the massive rise in crime and costs brought on by the illegal immigration cartels that profit handsomely from this terrible trade and then spread their evil through Mexico and into the U.S.

As for his claims that migrants are being sent back to terrible places, that might resonate more if the Vatican had said something about Nicolas Maduro and Hugo Chavez dismantling their countries' democracies as bottom after bottom after bottom fell out over the last twenty years. They were utterly silent and a lot of people noticed.

But they feel very confident and comfortable about telling the U.S. how to run its affairs as President Trump begins the Augean stable task of cleaning up after the Democrat disaster. For Maduro who creates the poverty and misery, no bony finger pointed. For Trump? They throw the kitchen sink.That double standard is, to say the least ... noticible, too.

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