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Amid a contentious feud with Pope Leo XIV regarding U.S. military interventions over the past several months, including the war in Iran, the Trump administration has ended an $11 million contract with the Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Miami.
The contract through the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) gave funds to the organization to provide housing and other resources for migrant children who entered the country without parents or adult family members.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees ORR, claimed the contract was cancelled because the number of migrant children entering the country was significantly lower than in years past. But leaders of the Catholic Charities, which has provided such services for decades, said the move was perplexing and disappointing.
“Our track record in serving this vulnerable population is unmatched. Yet, the Archdiocese of Miami’s Catholic Charities’ services for unaccompanied minors has been stripped of funding and will be forced to shut down within three months,” said Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski, adding that the action was “baffling” given the potential challenges of launching a similar program in the future.
Although the number of unaccompanied migrant children has lessened, there are still hundreds of kids who are in need of the support that the Catholic Charities organization provides. The closure of the program could be “incredibly psychologically harmful” for the children it currently serves, said Robert Latham, associate director of the Children and Youth Law Clinic at the University of Miami Law School.
The organization said it was told the contract was ending at the end of last month, around the same time that Pope Leo began issuing indirect critiques of the Trump administration and the war in Iran.
In late March during his Palm Sunday sermon, Leo appeared to reference Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has regularly invoked Christian rhetoric and, around that time, had issued a prayer at the Pentagon for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy” in the war in Iran.
“This is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war,” Leo said in his sermon. “He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”
In a pre-Easter statement on social media, Leo also decried “the imperialist occupation of the world” and stated it was important to remember “that neither in the pastoral sphere nor in the social and political spheres can good come from abuse of power.”
And more recently, Leo’s X account posted a missive that again seemed to reference the Trump administration. “Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth,” the account wrote.
President Donald Trump has criticized the pontiff over the latter’s statements against war. In a Truth Social post on Sunday, for example, Trump claimed Leo was “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy.” The president later shared an AI-generated picture depicting himself as Jesus Christ healing a sick person.
Amid outcry at the post, including from many of Trump’s own far right religious base, the president dubiously claimed the image depicted him “as a doctor,” not Jesus.
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