The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has taken legal action against the US government led by President Trump – for the sudden ending of funding of the resettlement of refugees – as required, the bishops argue, by the US Constitution and congressional law.

“For decades, the U.S. government has chosen to admit refugees and outsourced its statutory responsibility to provide those refugees with resettlement assistance to non-profit organizations like USCCB,” the lawsuit states, Feb 18th. “But now, after refugees have arrived and been placed in USCCB’s care, the government is attempting to pull the rug out from under USCCB’s programs by halting funding,”

Causing the sudden ending of funding that fed newly arrived refugees and employed hundreds in their support, the governments action has also denied reimbursement of millions for work already completed, according to the suit “with no indication that any future reimbursements will be paid or that the program will ever resume.”

This action intensifies a conflict between the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and the Trump administration that began soon after New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan had offered solemn prayers at the inauguration of President Trump on Jan 20th. On Jan 26th, on the TV channel NBC, Vice President JD Vance suggested that when US bishops spoke on behalf of immigrants they were more concerned about their ‘bottom line’ – an apparent reference to government funding of the refugee programme.  As the state subsidy did not in fact cover the full cost to the US church of their refugee programme this remark was regarded by the Cardinal as ‘scurrilous’, ‘nasty’ and ‘not true’ – as expressed to Fox 5 New York.

VP Vance seems to have further annoyed Pope Francis by attempting to employ Catholic teaching in the cause of the government’s colder face towards immigrants. Pope Francis implicitly rebuked VP Vance, a Catholic, in a letter to US bishops dated February 11th – referring to the parable of the Good Samaritan. Subsequently a confidant of the pope, Austrian Cardinal Cristoph Schönborn has called the decision-making of the new administration ‘dangerous’.