Vatican City, Oct 9, 2025 / 09:12 am
Pope Leo XIV sent a letter this week commending Catholic Charities USA for being “agents of hope” to vulnerable people, especially migrants and refugees.
As migrants and refugees “are not able to rely on their own resources and have to depend on God and the goodness of others, in many ways your ministry makes the Lord’s providence concrete for them,” the pontiff wrote, addressing the 115th annual meeting of the Catholic Charities USA Network, taking place in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Oct. 6–9.
“Through providing food, shelter, medical care, legal assistance, and many other gestures of kindness, Catholic Charities affiliates across the United States show what Pope Francis often referred to as God’s ‘style’ of closeness, compassion, and tenderness,” he added.
Catholic Charities USA (CCUSA), founded in 1910, is a network of 168 independent Catholic Charities agencies across all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and five U.S. territories.
CCUSA President and CEO Kerry Alys Robinson said the network is “profoundly grateful to Pope Leo XIV for the apostolic blessing he has imparted upon the Catholic Charities network, and we are inspired and invigorated by the solidarity and encouragement he offered in his letter.”
In his letter, the pontiff said while those affected by poverty and forced migration face many challenges, “they can also be witnesses to hope not only through their trust in divine assistance but also by their resilience in often having to overcome many obstacles on their journeys.”
He also pointed out the positive influence many Catholic migrants and refugees have had on different nations, including the U.S., through their vibrant faith and popular devotions.
“It might be said that through assisting displaced persons to find their new homes in your country, you also act as bridge builders between nations, cultures, and peoples,” Leo wrote. “I encourage you, then, to continue helping the communities who receive these newly arrived brothers and sisters to be living witnesses of hope, recognizing that they have an intrinsic human dignity and are invited to participate fully in community life.”
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Dear Pope Leo: Stop purposely deceiving the Catholic Faithful by calling these invaders of our country ‘migrants.” They certainly are NOT! They are illegal aliens and Catholic Charities ought to be ashamed of themselves for getting rich off the back of those who have committed crimes.
One looks forward to the practical proposal the Holy Father will offer instructing nations on just how to absorb an unrelenting invasion of unvetted impoverished migrants with no skills assisting them to survive in technologically sophisticated societies.
That surely not forthcoming, the Holy Father might best address the petty third world dictators exporting their criminal class, as well as their poor and oppressed, and instruct them on the means of establishing just and prospering societies. Do I hear crickets?
This global crisis is obviously far outside the Holy Father’s wheelhouse. He had best address the issues proper to his portfolio. As reported by Pew Research only 9% of American Roman Catholic believe in the Most Holy Trinity. Given that reality it is safe to assume that the divinity of Jesus Christ is either rejected or misunderstood by a scandalously substantial number of the baptized. And surely the rejection of the sacramental life by a legion of the baptized bespeaks a rejection of a host of other theological realities, the Paschal Mystery, transubstantiation, the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Mother, et al. Then of course there is the practice of the virtues and the rejection of vices — including breaking the just laws of any society.
We don’t require the sorely lacking economic “expertise” of the Bishop of Rome. We don’t require a globe-trotting Pope. We require a Pope intent upon building a Church flourishing with vocations, to the priesthood, the religious life and sacramental Matrimony. That is achieved by catechesis. The crisis proper to Pope Leo’s ministry is that the faith is not being proclaimed — thus far by him, and without doubt his predecessor.
Twelve more years of what we endured during the last twelve years does not do justice to the position to which the Holy Father has been called, nor does it respond to the needs of the faithful. A Cupich-by-proxy pontificate just won’t do.
The observant faithful are waiting.
The Lord is at work. Migrants and refugees are coming home to collaborate energetically with their joy-filled hosts in the humble task of serving Planet Earth, our common home.