In 2016, the Lepanto Institute conducted a review of political contributions from employees of Catholic Relief Services, finding that 98% of those employees contributed to pro-abortion candidates and causes.
A new analysis of political campaign contributions, conducted by the Lepanto Institute and Complicit Clergy, updated and expanded this initial research to include individuals working for various other Catholic charitable institutions, namely Catholic Charities, Covenant House, St. Vincent de Paul, Catholic Relief Services, the Knights of Columbus, Cross Catholic Outreach and Jesuit Refugee Service.
We examined 47,000 public records for employees of those seven organizations over three reporting periods (2019-2020, 2021-2022, and 2023-2024) and included contributions received between 23 October 2018 – 27 February 2024. What we found was that an overwhelming majority of this data set supported pro-abortion, pro-LGBT (Democrat) candidates and/or causes. As can be seen in the chart below, 83% of the political contributions went to Democrat-affiliated Political Action Committees (PAC) like ActBlue, AB PAC, DNC Services, Biden for President, Biden Action Fund, Biden Victory Fund, and a long list of individual candidates. Only 16% of the contributions went to Republican PACs or candidates, such as WinRed, Donald J. Trump for President, Inc, NRCC, and similar organizations.
Examining the political contributions of the employees belonging to these charitable organizations reveals that all but the Knights of Columbus (KoC) are completely dominated by hard-Left employees. While the political contributions coming from those working for the KoC (90%) went to Republican candidates or causes, such employees are clearly deep minorities for all the other organizations we examined. Conversely, 99% of political contributions coming from Catholic Relief Services (CRS) went to Democrat candidates or causes. And while only 76% of Catholic Charities’ employees contribute to Democrat candidates and causes, its employees constitute the largest donor base to political candidates of all Catholic charitable organizations: $180,090 for Republican candidates and causes and $592,872 for Democrat candidates and causes.
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