(RNS) — More than a year after Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency slashed federal funding for Catholic Relief Services as it dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development, the State Department announced it would give the Catholic agency more than $240 million for humanitarian and disaster response assistance.
Catholic Relief Services is the international relief arm of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and it partners with other Catholic relief organizations that are also members of Caritas Internationalis around the globe. CRS was the top recipient of funding from USAID.
In a Friday (June 5) press release, the State Department said the funding for CRS would be used for food, water, health, sanitation and shelter in “countries with significant levels of humanitarian need,” including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, Nigeria and Sudan. CRS is already working to respond to the Ebola crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Before last year’s USAID cuts, federal funding supported about half of CRS’ $1.5 billion budget, making the $240 million grant a fraction of the support the agency once received from the government.
Alistair Dutton, secretary general of Caritas Internationalis, the umbrella organization over CRS, told RNS last year that U.S. aid cuts would cause millions of people to die and hundreds of millions to suffer.
The State Department said this grant would be the first in a series of awards to “trusted and vetted implementing organizations” focused on lifesaving assistance that are able to respond to crises around the world with …