The Vatican’s foreign minister warned yesterday that the Trump Administration’s decision to gut the United States’ foreign aid assistance has created a “problem worldwide”. Source: NCR Online.
“We’re hearing of the very bad effects of that around the world,” said Archbishop Paul Gallagher, secretary for relations with states at the Vatican’s Secretariat of State. “It’s a very, very serious situation.”
The diplomat added that the Trump Administration’s cancellation of some $US60 billion ($95 billion) in foreign aid comes “at a time when it seems, to us, very evident that what the world is in need of now is more expressions of solidarity, not less”.
The archbishop’s remarks came during a question and answer session following a book launch for Iraq’s Christian Heritage: Survival in Mesopotamia by German scholar Matthias Kopp.
Earlier this month, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a Catholic, announced that over 80 per cent of the projects administered by the US Agency for International Development, or USAID, will be cancelled.
Among the initiatives affected, Archbishop Gallagher highlighted the shuttering of Catholic Relief Services projects, programming that provides support for displaced Rohingya people in Bangladesh and programs throughout sub-Saharan Africa.
The Vatican’s foreign minister added that when the incoming US ambassador to the Holy See arrives to take up his post, “we will certainly be raising these issues.”
FULL STORY
Top Vatican diplomat says Trump’s USAID cuts have created ‘problem worldwide’ (By Christopher White, NCR Online)
