US Bishops’ Grants Linked to Abortion and Gender Ideology
A new investigation by the Lepanto Institute has raised grave concerns over the financial practices of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), alleging that its domestic anti-poverty arm, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), has for years distributed Church funds to organisations that publicly support abortion, contraception, and gender ideology.
A Trail of Questionable Grants
According to the report, released on 6 November 2025, the CCHD has since 2004 awarded sixteen separate grants, totalling $760,000, to the United Workers Association (UWA), an activist network headquartered in Baltimore. Among these was a $25,000 grant approved for the 2024–25 funding cycle.¹ The UWA describes itself as a grassroots movement for “economic justice,” yet Lepanto’s documentation reveals its open promotion of causes fundamentally opposed to Catholic moral teaching.
The report notes that the UWA publicly supports taxpayer-funded “gender transition” procedures, same-sex “marriage,” and policies expanding access to contraception and abortion. It also serves as the fiscal sponsor for Put People First PA (PPF-PA)—an organisation that has repeatedly endorsed Planned Parenthood and participated in public campaigns under the banner of “reproductive justice.” In 2017, the group declared on social media: *“We’re out supporting Planned Parenthood! Reproductive justice is a right!”*²
Ignored Warnings and Continued Support
Michael Hichborn, president of the Lepanto Institute, states that the bishops’ conference was warned of these associations as early as 2011. Despite the evidence presented to the CCHD, he says, “funding not only continued but expanded,” signalling either bureaucratic inertia or deliberate disregard for moral accountability.³
Hichborn argues that these grants contradict the CCHD’s stated mission and violate the moral criteria the bishops themselves have established for charitable funding. “There is no excuse,” he writes, “for aiding organisations that so blatantly oppose the Church’s defence of life and the natural law.”⁴
The Legacy of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development
Founded in 1969 in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, the CCHD was originally conceived as a means of addressing systemic poverty in the United States through education and community organisation. Yet from its earliest years, critics within the Church have accused it of blurring the lines between Catholic charity and secular activism.
Reports in the 1970s and 1980s uncovered grants to groups aligned with Marxist liberation theology and political coalitions that promoted abortion rights and contraception. In 2010, the bishops’ conference promised reforms following a series of exposés, yet many traditional Catholics argue that the ideological trajectory of the campaign has not changed.
The current controversy, linking nearly a million dollars in grants to an organisation with overt socialist affiliations, appears to confirm what critics have long warned—that the CCHD functions less as a Catholic charity and more as a funding arm for progressive social movements.
Radical Alliances and Public Activism
The Lepanto Institute report traces the UWA’s cooperation with socialist and Marxist organisations, including the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), and its support for defunding the police during the 2020 unrest.⁵ Such positions, the report argues, demonstrate an explicit alignment with revolutionary political movements that reject not only Catholic anthropology but the entire moral order upon which Christian society rests.
Observers note that such entanglements reveal a deep confusion within parts of the Church about the distinction between authentic social justice, rooted in divine law, and ideological activism driven by materialist and secular principles. The Church’s mission to aid the poor, they insist, cannot be separated from the Gospel’s command to uphold truth and moral integrity.
Moral and Pastoral Implications
Beyond the immediate financial scandal, this case raises serious moral and pastoral questions. If episcopal agencies fail to discern the moral orientation of the organisations they fund, the faithful are left wondering whether their almsgiving is being used to undermine the very values the Church professes to defend.
The bishops’ conference, by its own charter, bears the duty to ensure that all its initiatives conform to Catholic teaching on life, marriage, and human dignity. Caritas in Veritate warns that “without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality,”⁶ and Quadragesimo Anno insists that no social programme may ignore the immutable moral law.⁷ When charitable giving becomes detached from these principles, it ceases to be an act of mercy and becomes an act of complicity.
Call for Accountability and Renewal
The faithful, who have contributed to these programmes in good faith, deserve transparency and reform. Many commentators have called for an independent moral audit of the CCHD’s grant-making, arguing that episcopal responsibility demands not only financial probity but doctrinal fidelity.
Until the bishops publicly address these allegations, doubts will continue to grow regarding their stewardship of the faithful’s offerings and their capacity to safeguard the moral integrity of Catholic charitable work. The credibility of the Church’s witness to the sanctity of life depends upon such accountability.
- Michael Hichborn, Lepanto Institute Report on the United Workers Association, 6 Nov 2025.
- Put People First PA, Twitter post, 2017.
- LifeSiteNews, “US bishops have given $760 k to pro-abortion, pro-LGBT socialists: report”, 6 Nov 2025.
- Ibid.
- Lepanto Institute Report, 2025.
- Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, §3.
- Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, §42.
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