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US bishops’ charity arm gave funding to pro-LGBT, anti-police group backed by Tim Walz – LifeSite


(LifeSiteNews) — The Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), the U.S. bishops’ scandal-ridden charity arm, announced last week that it has given funding to a pro-LGBT, anti-police group in Minnesota backed by far-left Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz.

An October 25 press release from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) noted that one of the CCHD’s grant recipients is Centro de Trabajadores Unidas en la Lucha (CTUL) in Minneapolis. The CCHD distributed more than $12.7 million last year to “grassroots organizations” around the country that the USCCB claims “help poor or marginalized people,” according to the press release.

Centro de Trabajadores Unidas en la Lucha, which describes itself as “a nonprofit that empowers workers to fight for their rights,” has a history of promoting transgenderism and homosexuality and working with pro-LGBT groups and socialist politicians, as the Lepanto Institute detailed in a 2022 report.

CTUL celebrated LGBT “pride” in 2020, saying, “Pride was an uprising against the police, started by (so-called) queer and trans Black and Brown people … 51 years later, we still have not seen justice. Let’s not lose sight of the roots of Pride and how much work there still is to be done.”

The group has also hosted an event promoting “womxns movements” and “LGBTQ movements,” called for people to “honor” so-called “trans and gender nonconforming individuals,” praised the Supreme Court’s 2020 Bostock v. Clayton ruling that forces employers to hire openly homosexual and gender-confused workers, and urged people to donate to transgender activist groups, including the Transgender Law Center, which defends transgender surgeries and drugs for children. 

In a March 2019 post, CTUL asserted that so-called “trans rights are human rights.” The following year, the group reportedly sought to train its staff in “trans equity.”

Numerous CTUL leaders and organizers have promoted abortion and LGBT ideology, the Lepanto Institute reported. CTUL’s executive director, Veronica Mendez Moore, has also supported and even campaigned for socialist political candidates in Minneapolis. 

Moreover, CTUL has worked closely with other groups that contradict Catholic teaching, such as TakeAction MN, a strongly pro-abortion, pro-LGBT left-wing activist coalition. CTUL was previously a member of TakeAction and was listed as a sponsor of a TakeAction fundraising event in December 2021. Mendez Moore was identified as a board member of TakeAction as recently as 2020. 

In addition to the CTUL’s LGBT and abortion activism, the group has pushed to defund the police and became a “hub of protest” after the death of George Floyd in 2020, according to Dissent magazine. 

CTUL shared a Facebook post in June 2020 showing its organizer Valentina McKenzie speaking at a rally calling for the defunding of police, where she wore a shirt that said “#defund police,” the Washington Examiner reported.

“We’ve protested,” one CTUL organizer was quoted saying that year. “We fought for the police not to get higher pay, but we were ignored, and they are still killing. Now, it is to the point where everybody is so angry – I don’t think half of these stores would have been burned or touched if we weren’t so fed up.”

The administration of Walz, the governor of Minnesota, gave CTUL a $100,000 contract in 2023.

CTUL is a longtime funding recipient of the U.S. bishops’ CCHD and has received $345,000 from the program since 2010, according to the Lepanto Institute. 

As the USCCB’s October 25 press release noted, “Grant applications are reviewed and approved by both the local bishop and the U.S. bishops’ subcommittee on CCHD.”

The Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, in which CTUL is located, is led by Archbishop Bernard Hebda, and the U.S. bishops’ subcommittee on CCHD is led by recently appointed Bishop Timothy C. Senior of Harrisburg. 

“It’s utterly unconscionable for the USCCB to continue soliciting funds from unsuspecting Catholics while so many questions remain about the CCHD,” Michael Hichborn, the founder and president of the Lepanto Institute, told LifeSiteNews. “The CCHD regularly finances organizations like CTUL – which demonstrably promote gravely immoral ideologies and acts – while refusing to address concerns from faithful Catholics or even adhere to their own guidelines.”

READ: Catholic bishops defending the CCHD gave grants to pro-abortion, pro-LGBT groups: report

For years, the CCHD has given millions of dollars to groups that openly flout Catholic teaching and promote abortion, homosexuality, transgenderism, contraception, and other grave evils, in contradiction to the CCHD’s stated policy. 

CCHD grantees have included groups that partner with Planned Parenthood, help jailed women obtain abortions, promote obscene LGBT material to children, and practice demonic rituals. 

Despite the CCHD being repeatedly exposed for funding organizations that violate the teaching of the Church, the program has refused to answer Catholics’ questions and continues to falsely claim that its grantees advance Catholic teaching. It has also not released a full list of grantees since 2022, though it claims to “publish a list of recent grantees online each year.”

“The USCCB has an obligation to make the CCHD fully transparent by publishing all grants lists and explaining the current direction and finances of the organization in full before asking faithful Catholics for a single dime,” Hichborn said. “They claim that the CCHD is committed to transparency, yet hasn’t published a grants list in over two years”

In July, the USCCB announced layoffs at the CCHD, after its assets dropped from $58 million in 2013 to $8 million in 2022, as LifeSiteNews reported.

Bishop Senior nevertheless insisted that the embattled program is “an essential part of the social mission of the Church in the United States” in the bishops’ October 25 press release.


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