Front Royal, VA – On March 6th the Lepanto Institute and Population Research Institute jointly issued a 130-page report detailing how CRS was directly complicit in the promotion of contraception, masturbation, condom use, and the funding of abortion advocates in Africa.
On March 15, after a week of stonewalling the press, Catholic Relief Services (CRS) finally issued a blanket denial of these charges. Beatriz Afanador, CRS director of Marketing and Communications for the Hispanic market told EWTN Noticias, “These accusations are not new, they are simply reiterations of statements made before, which at the time have been thoroughly investigated.” He added that after several evaluations, “CRS has confirmed that these claims are completely unfounded.”
In response, Michael Hichborn, president of the Lepanto Institute, and Steven Mosher, president of Population Research Institute, together issue the following statement:
“The findings of our year-long investigation are devastating. Our report shows:
- CRS materials aimed at children as young as 10 – with CRS’ logo on the front – promote masturbation as a form of ‘safe sex.’
- CRS created and funded a health referral network that included contraception-providers and a radical pro-abortion organization called RENATA, whose very logo is an icon of abortion: it depicts a pregnant woman with an ‘X’ through the location of the baby. The funding of RENATA appears to have violated the Mexico City Policy.
- CRS led the implementation of a government-funded program called DREAMS, which has the stated and required objective of increasing the use of contraception among adolescent girls and young women.
- CRS purchased and utilized pornographic comprehensive sex education materials as a foundation for its participation in DREAMS.
- CRS enrolled girls into the DREAMS project and provided them with a DREAMS passport that told them where and how to obtain contraception.
Our in-country researchers obtained tangible evidence in the form of documents and interviews with CRS officials in Africa that verify each of these conclusions.
If CRS has information contradicting the facts in our report, then by all means it should produce it.
If CRS has a moral analysis that contradicts the assertion made by our Catholic theologian, Dr. Christian Brugger, that CRS is formally and materially cooperating in evil in the projects we describe in our report, then it should produce it.
The effort to dismiss our new evidence as old news is nothing but a cynical ploy that CRS has used before to avoid confronting the serious moral issues that afflict its programs.
Note that this is not a case of our word against CRS’. It is rather a case of a careful, detailed investigation and analysis carried out by faithful Catholics that is being met with blanket denials from a powerful institution—primarily funded by the government–which, quite frankly, are not credible.
The bishops need to demand transparency and accountability from CRS. Until this happens, the laity need to redirect their charitable giving elsewhere.”
Read the full report here.
###
To schedule an interview with PRI President Steven Mosher, contact the Population Research Institute at [email protected].
The Population Research Institute (PRI) is a 501(c)(3) educational non-profit organization dedicated to promoting respect for human rights in the context of population issues. To learn more about PRI’s work, visit www.pop.org.
