ROME — The head of the Vatican’s office for Promoting Integral Human Development claims immigrants are being “terrorized” by President Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
Cardinal Michael Czerny, a Canadian Jesuit named by Pope Francis in 2022 to lead the Vatican’s development office, told the Associated Press (AP) that the measures employed by the Trump administration to fix the immigration problem have been “terrible.”
“A crackdown is a terrible way to administer affairs and much less to administer justice,” Czerny said. “And so I’m very sorry that many people are being hurt and indeed terrorized by the measures.”
“All we can hope for is that the people, God’s people and the people of goodwill, will help and protect those vulnerable people who are suddenly made much more vulnerable,” he said.
In 2018, when Czerny was co-secretary of the Vatican’s department for migrants and refugees, he said that the Church needs to “change the narrative” on immigration, because “the public view is negative.”
“We need positive stories,” the Jesuit said, in order to help people appreciate the benefits of migration instead of always focusing on its problems.
There is a natural tendency to “scapegoat” migrants and people who are different from us, especially when we are suffering political, social and economic unrest, Czerny said at the time.
The typical negative narrative on the migration issue has nothing to do with migrants and refugees, who have “enormously enriched” modern societies, Czerny stated, but reflects rather “a misplaced disappointment with our leaders.”
Migrants and refugees “are being scapegoated,” he said. “So, I think by telling the truth and by telling positive stories, that’s how I hope we can reverse that narrative.”
In his interview with AP this week, Cardinal Czerny also criticized the Trump administration’s funding freeze on USAID, which helps finance church-run aid programs.
It’s one thing to review the government’s foreign aid budget or to reform an agency like USAID, he said, but 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.
“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,” he added.
One of the organizations hit hard by the cuts is Catholic Relief Services (CRS), which is among USAID’s biggest non-governmental recipients of funding. The group has been sharply criticized by conservatives for promoting practices contrary to Church teaching, such as abortion.
A 2024 study on campaign contributions revealed that employees of Catholic charitable organizations such as Catholic Relief Services overwhelmingly swing Democrat in their donations to political causes.
The study, which drew on an analysis of 47,000 public records, found that an astounding 99 percent of political contributions coming from Catholic Relief Services went to Democrat candidates or causes.
“I think people are still reeling from the news and beginning to figure out how to respond,” Czerny said about the cuts.
Catholic Relief Services receives about half of its $1.5 billion annual budget from USAID, whose programs are under scrutiny by the Department of Government Efficiency for wastefulness and for financing programs inconsistent with U.S. interests.
“If the government thinks that its programs have been distorted by ideology, well, then they should reform the programs,” Czerny said. “Many people would say that shutting down is not the best way to reform them.”
Czerny is just one of a long string of Jesuits raised by Pope Francis — the Church’s first Jesuit pope — to positions of honor and influence.
Francis named fellow Jesuit Archbishop Luis Ladaria Ferrer in 2017 to head the Vatican’s powerful doctrinal office (DDF), making him the first member of the Jesuit order to occupy that position as well.
“This gives the pope the chance to finally place his own man in a very important spot,” said Jesuit Father James Martin at the time.
In another first, in June 2017 the pope gave Ireland its debut Jesuit bishop, naming Father Alan McGuckian S.J. to the diocese of Raphoe. At the time, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said that Father McGuckian would bring “rich experiences and gifts” to his new ministry as bishop.
In April of the same year, Francis appointed two more Jesuits — Father James Martin and Father Jacquineau Azétsop of the Gregorian University — as consultants for the Vatican’s Secretariat for communications.
In a 2016 consistory, the pope raised three more Jesuits to the rank of cardinal, the archbishop of Luxembourg Jean-Claude Höllerich, an outspoken advocate of for freer immigration into Europe, the Lithuanian archbishop Sigitas Tamkevičius, and Michael Czerny.
In November, 2019, Francis tapped his confrere Jesuit Father Juan Antonio Guerrero Alves to head up the Vatican’s influential secretariat for the economy, a post previously held by Australian Cardinal George Pell.
In 2021, the pope appointed Jesuit Stephen Chow Sau-yan as the bishop of Hong Kong Diocese and later also made him a cardinal. Chow has proven unwilling to criticize Beijing or to defend the pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, just the sort of compliant bishop the CCP prefers and a far cry from the former bishop of Hong Kong, Cardinal Joseph Zen.
Instead, Chow has thrown his full support behind China’s Sinicization project, suggesting that the Communist party’s principles significantly align with Catholic teaching.
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