(RNS) — After the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops announced last week that it would restructure its department of Justice, Peace & Human Development, the department’s partner organizations face uncertainty as they try to discern their next steps without knowing the full impact of the layoffs.
“We are hoping that there is some kind of alternative plan to keep the church going, to keep the justice and peace programs going, to keep our advocacy work going,” said Steven Nabieu Rogers, executive director of the Africa Faith and Justice Network.
The Africa Faith and Justice Network focuses on empowering Africans to lead advocacy in their own communities while lobbying on those communities’ behalf in Washington. Rogers described the bishops’ office of international justice and peace as “critical to our work, because we act as that bridge engaging the African church with the American church here.”
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Rogers said that the partnership between his organization and the USCCB had allowed the two organizations to share critical information and that the USCCB had used resources to push forward priorities, such as convening African bishops from the Sahel region, that would not be possible for his organization to do alone.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops confirmed in a June 25 email to Religion News Service that layoffs and restructuring had been announced internally in the department the previous day.
“It can be more accurately characterized as really a retreat from the mission of the church,” said Rogers, who cited Pope Benedict XVI’s words that the church “cannot and must not remain on the sidelines in the fight for justice.”
Steven Nabieu Rogers, executive director of the Africa Faith & Justice Network. Courtesy of AFJN
Rogers said he had learned that the positions of the policy experts focused on Africa and Asia had been eliminated. He pointed out that the church is seeing its fastest growth in Africa as well as significant growth in Asia. “That’s where the church is going and so therefore that relationship has to be maintained,” Rogers said.
Crux reported that on Friday (June 28) the U.S. bishops received a memo signed by the Rev. Michael Fuller, the general secretary of the conference, saying that four of 17 staffers at Justice, Peace & Human Development had been let go, as were six staffers at the Catholic Campaign for Human Development. That office was moved out of the department as part of the restructuring. The department, in addition, would become the Secretariat of Justice and Peace, a different structure in the conference’s bureaucracy.
A spokesperson for the USCCB did not respond to RNS questions about whether there are any additional position losses because of retirees whose jobs will not be refilled.
In the USCCB statement to RNS, the conference cited financial reasons for the restructuring. The Catholic Campaign for Human Development is funded through a national collection, or second offering held in parishes across the country one Sunday a year. At last month’s national bishops’ meeting, the initiative’s future was under discussion, with the conference citing lower collections recently.
But several former leaders in the department questioned a financial justification, saying the cutbacks exceeded the department’s dips in funds that have been attributed to the pandemic.
“As a Catholic, I strongly believe that the mission moves the church, not the money,” said Rogers, who said collections had shown signs of recovering.
“The top priority is to get the collection back to a minimum of $9 million,” said Ana Garcia-Ashley, executive director of the Gamaliel Network, whose affiliates and national operation have gotten grants from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development for faith-based community organizing. In 2022, the collection raised nearly $8.2 million, according to its annual report.
However, for more than a decade, Michael Hichborn, who leads the nonprofit Lepanto Institute, has spearheaded a campaign against CCHD, linking grantees of the program to groups who allegedly advocate for positions contrary to Catholic teaching, including “promoting abortion, birth control, homosexuality and Marxism.”
