Vatican newspaper criticizes Trump administration’s USAID cuts

March 17, 2025

Father Giulio Albanese, an Italian missionary who writes regularly on Africa for L’Osservatore Romano, strongly criticized the Trump administration’s decision to pause foreign-aid funding through USAID, the United States Agency for International Development.

“Among the 26 poorest countries in the world, there are several in Africa alone (Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Mali, Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Ethiopia, Uganda and Liberia) to which USAID has so far provided about a fifth of its humanitarian assistance,” Father Albanese wrote in the Vatican newspaper on March 14.

“Development assistance provides global aid, already insufficient in itself, with an estimated value of $223 billion, or about $300 per year for each of the 700 million human beings in absolute poverty in the world,” he continued. “With the US contribution gone, the figure would decrease by one-sixth.”

Continuing his criticism of the Trump administration, Father Albanese also criticized the EU:

The attack on the policies of international solidarity and development aid has Trump as the main protagonist today, but certainly not the only one in these years that have seen sovereignist and xenophobic forces gain consensus even in some founding countries of the European Union—which at this stage unfortunately also makes it uncertain whether the EU could finance the associations and initiatives abandoned by USAID.

The various member countries finance international cooperation for about 50 billion euros every year. But even on this we must be clear that the funds for such cooperation go mostly to European companies that go operate in the so-called developing countries, not to mention the payments to autocratic governments to keep on their territory—usually in inhumane conditions and sometimes killing—those refugees and migrants who try to reach Europe.

Echoing a Vatican spokesman’s criticism of increased EU military aid, Father Albanese concluded his article—classified by the newspaper as an international news article, rather than as an op-ed—by criticizing EU politicians who vote for military aid rather than for anti-poverty projects:

Perhaps it would be useful to remind the proponents of the political forces that are confronting each other in Europe, and in particular those who declare themselves Catholic in words and perhaps with the display of crucifixes and rosaries brandished as weapons against the enemy of the moment, that the teaching of the Church in this regard is clear and cannot be circumvented.

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