(OSV News) — The numbers alone are impressive: 16 million people and 28 million meals served; services supporting strong families for 500,000 clients; basic needs and emergency financial services for 2.8 million people; behavioral health and wellness services for 526,000 individuals; 2.8 million nights of emergency shelter; emergency housing services for 295,000 without lodging; 52 disasters responded to in the U.S. and its territories.

These figures represent the work of Catholic Charities USA and its 168 diocesan affiliate agencies, work that has come under scrutiny by Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic, and some in the media.

In a January 26 interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Vance questioned the motives of the U.S. bishops’ criticism of the new Trump administration’s hardline immigration policies — including allowing raids on churches and schools — asking whether it had more to do with losing federal resettlement funding and “their bottom line.”

Fox News Channel’s Laura Ingraham, also a Catholic, said in a January 29 broadcast, “I mean, no one wants to criticize Catholic Charities, but you can’t be facilitating illegal immigration.”

Such claims have ignited a vigorous rebuttal from U.S. Catholic bishops in defense of the church’s charitable agencies.

Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York, who offered prayers at both of President Donald Trump’s inaugurations — expressed frustration with Vance’s “Face the Nation” comments, calling them “not only harmful” but demonstrably “not true,” pointing to the church’s audited financials.

“You think we make money caring for the immigrants? We’re losing it hand over fist,” Cardinal Dolan said January 29 on his SiriusXM Catholic Channel. He said Vance’s remarks were a “let down” from “a guy that struck me as a gentleman and a thoughtful man and from whom I’m still expecting great things.”

“Certain news outlets continue to make claims that Catholic Charities participates in illegal immigration and human trafficking, earning large profits while doing so,” Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, said in a February 3 message to the faithful. “As your Bishop and Chairman of the Board of Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, I can assure you these are false claims levied against our Catholic Charities agency.”

“The complete opposite is true,” he said. “Our diocesan Catholic Charities participates in pathways for legal immigration and supports survivors of human trafficking, while operating those programs at a fiscal deficit.”

According to Catholic Charities USA, only 5% of the services provided by its agencies last year were immigration and refugee services.

“Catholic Charities agencies serve migrants not because they are newcomers to the U.S., but because they are vulnerable and in need, like all those we serve. This work is a response to the Gospel mandate to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and welcome the stranger,” the CCUSA website states.

Catholic Charities agencies provide essential services, such as food, clothing and a place to sleep, as part of how the church puts the Gospel mandate from Jesus Christ into action.

Federal, state, and local governments have asked some Catholic Charities agencies — especially those near the U.S.-Mexico border — to assist migrants the federal government has processed and released with pending immigration court proceedings. Others also offer legal assistance to migrants navigating the complicated immigration legal system.

Such assistance, Bishop Rhoades emphasized, should not be mistaken for abetting illegal immigration — especially since federal authorities have regularly brought migrants to local Catholic Charities agencies after processing them through U.S.-Mexico ports of entry.

“This does not mean that we support open borders and disregard the rule of law,” he said.

“While the Catholic Church recognizes and respects the right of every nation to regulate its borders for the common good, we must balance this with the rights of vulnerable migrants to access protection, and with the fundamental right of all to life and dignity as human persons; as well as,” Bishop Rhoades added, “the rights of parents and the family, the cradle of life and love, the first and most vital cell of society.”

Bishop Rhoades also explained how Catholic Charities worked as a “contracted resettlement agency” working under the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

“Funds received are used to provide financial support for the first 90 to 240 days after arrival, until the refugee families become economically self-sufficient; provide immigration legal services as they study to become U.S. citizens; as well as to partially pay for the staff that provide those services,” he said.

In his own diocese, he said, Catholic Charities in the latest fiscal year “received $3.0 million in contract revenue and spent $3.2 million to administer the program.”

Bishop Joseph J. Tyson of the Diocese of Yakima, Washington, also spoke out concerning immigration and refugees in his February 2 pastoral letter, “A Light for the Gentiles,” citing his six years leading the U.S. bishops’ efforts for the pastoral care for migrants and refugees. He had sharp words specifically for Vance’s “Face the Nation” claims.

“We follow the command to ‘love our neighbor’ and to ‘welcome the stranger,’ which are commands from the words of Jesus himself,” Bishop Tyson said, rejecting charges that the church’s assistance encourages illegal activity or profits from its immigration efforts.

“We receive no money to resettle ‘illegal’ migrants,” he said. But when it resettles refugees, he said the church loses money “on every resettlement.”

“The government contracts do not cover the cost of resettlement,” he explained.

He noted Washington state no longer has a Catholic Charities office that offers these services, because the church “could not sustain the loss.”

“In Central Washington, neither the Diocese of Yakima nor Catholic Charities receive any money from the government for resettling refugees or migrants. Not a single penny!” he said.

The bishop’s diocese is located in one of the world’s leading sources of apples and other produce, largely harvested through migrant labor. Any welcome extended to migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers, he said, is due to the diocese’s generous parishioners.

Bishop Tyson emphasized that people without legal immigration status are “our fellow parishioners and neighbors.” Regarding them, he shared how hundreds of Catholic youth in his diocese now fear their parents may be deported. He condemned Vance’s eager affirmation of deliberately instilling fear — such as by making schools generally open to immigration raids — as an immigration enforcement tactic.

“That the vice president — who refers to himself in the CBS interview as a devout Catholic — would want to engender fear as a tactic is deeply disturbing,” he wrote. “It’s also contrary to the teaching of Christ and the teachings of the Church.”

Bishop Rhoades also denounced attacks on the U.S. Refugee Admission Program, or USRAP, which his diocesan Catholic Charities agency has participated in since that federal program was launched in 1980.

“USRAP is the formal process by which people are legally resettled in the United States as refugees. Resettlement through USRAP is distinct from the U.S. asylum process,” he said.

Individuals resettled through USRAP are “screened, vetted, and approved by the U.S. government while outside of the United States,” he explained.

Bishop Tyson likewise in his letter emphasized that refugees resettled by the Catholic Church underwent 12-24 months of screening.

“That screening is conducted by the federal government itself. So, if there’s a problem with screening, it’s not because we have failed the federal government as a partner,” he said. “It’s because the federal government has failed us.”

More bishops have come to the fore to defend the church’s ministries to migrants and refugees.

In a January 24 interview with Vatican News, Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio of the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services, president of the USCCB, likewise talked about the U.S. church’s “tremendous network — of Catholic Charities, of migration services that respond to people in these difficult situations — and we want to make those possibilities available to those most in need.”

At the same time, Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso, Texas, who heads the U.S. bishops’ migration committee, told attendees at a Georgetown University event February 12 that he wanted to offer the vice president an opportunity to dialogue over the church’s work with migrants and refugees.

“I would love to sit down sometime with Vice President Vance and talk to him about these issues in regard to our resettlement work and things like that because he clearly has been misinformed,” he said.

“That is so unfortunate when it comes from a person who has a loud megaphone,” Bishop Seitz said. “It can be very harmful to this work of the church to very vulnerable people.”

– – –
Kimberley Heatherington writes for OSV News from Virginia. OSV News staff reporter Kate Scanlon contributed to this report.