January 2020
The CAFOD Chronicles: 1
Over the years, the editor of Christian Order has performed sterling service in exposing the evils of the so-called Catholic Agency For Overseas Development, and reiterating that the hierarchy of England & Wales should dissolve its own predatory creature. Evidence published so far has largely concentrated on CAFOD’s undermining of Christian moral doctrine, although the March 2019 issue also itemised the profligacy of its £51 million income compared to cash-strapped, genuine Catholic charities.
My three-part report now examines CAFOD in all its aspects, ranging from history and constitution to organisation and finances. In all this, there is a leaning towards sodomy and Marxism, the former of which involves ignoring its remit to help the poor overseas while the latter is excused by one of its all too many stated aims. This is to “increase understanding of the causes of poverty and injustice,” a phrase that actually contravenes the Charity Commission’s requirement for unambiguous wording.
For a start, the aim is as irrelevant as it is arrogant. Some parishioners know poverty only too well, while it is common sense that the various causes include age, sickness, widowhood and unemployment as well as natural disasters, not just political factors. The average Catholic with a Bible and television-set is as informed about poverty and injustice as CAFOD’s starry-eyed young recruits who are manipulated by masters with a Marxist worldview of class-struggle.
For them, life’s rich get richer, making the poor ever poorer, while wealthy northern nations oppress impoverished ones in the “global South.”
Four decades ago, Cafodists like Julian Filochowski and Mildred Neville largely blamed the “arms race,” specifically urging the USA and its NATO allies to cease defending non-Communist territory, and divert spending to what they then called the Third World. Next, it was all the fault of multinational companies that exploited (their capital did not develop!) natural resources.
Since 2003, when Chris Bain became CAFOD’s director, the line has been that the sea would swamp needy nations as a result of global warming (it metamorphosed into climatic change) caused by Western industry.
CAFOD’s licensed propaganda is one reason why only 83% of its income actually reaches partners abroad. In 2017 its combined spending on “UK development education” and “Advocacy and campaigning” reached £4½ million, while Marxist innuendo was also on the piles of paper used for fund-raising that together consumed £1 for every £10 of income from churchgoers and tax-payers.
That is reason enough for the latter part of this report to demonstrate in detail the diabolical hold that CAFOD has over the Catholic Church in England and Wales so that neither parishioners nor schoolchildren can escape its browbeating propaganda. Quoted throughout are some of CAFOD’s own overlooked anti-Catholic admissions, also noting evasions and excuses from its own staff, trustees, directors and associates. Even more damning is the criticism from authoritative sources on all sides: clerical and lay, religious and secular.
Two recent examples highlight this.
First, as reported in The Times, the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror of 25 July 2018, on a day when temperatures hit 33.3°C, “a guy from CAFOD” encouraged tiny tots at a Catholic primary school in Kent to walk around a field five times to show solidarity with what he called “refugees.” Despite provision of hats and water for the 'expedition', many took to social media to condemn the maltreatment of infants in such sweltering conditions. The furious grandmother of one child found it “disgusting.”
Secondly, CAFOD has fallen foul of yet another authority, the Humanitarian Quality Assurance Initiative, in Geneva, which gave it zero points out of five, declaring that “Cafod does not work systematically with partners to ensure communities are made aware of the expected behaviour of humanitarian staff regarding the prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse.” [Guardian, 17/10/18]
Despite these and previous scandals, which have made headlines in both the secular and religious press, CAFOD persists in bragging that it is trustworthy (something that goes without saying at other charities). “Research in 2017 showed that 88% of Mass-going Catholics questioned reported that they trust CAFOD ‘a great deal’ or ‘a lot’.” It is a pity that there is no indication of professional pollsters, who would need parish priests’ co-operation to waylay the faithful. Again, it conflicts with a boast in the 2016 annual report that “91% of supporters trust us” since that category excludes many other churchgoers, besides implying that one donor in ten gives this vainglorious charity a reluctant benefit of the doubt.
More telling is CAFOD’s admission, supported by anecdotal evidence, that it is accepted in only 77% of parishes, getting volunteers in 61%. Apart from anecdotal evidence, the Internet is replete with Catholic criticism of CAFOD on such sites as ccfather.blogspot.com … marklambert.blogspot.com … lifesitenews.com … catholicactionuk.blogspot.com … proecc.com … friendswithchrist.blogspot.com. One blogger, calling herself Olga, apparently removes CAFOD material from churches, while Fr Tim Finigan — prophetically, as he now serves Margate — has long recommended supporting Aid to the Church in Need or Pontifical Council Cor Unum [the-hermeneutic-of-continuity, 15/2/08].
A murky history
On 13 November 2014, even the dissenting Tablet asked “Has Cafod lost its way?” This was echoed by Lawrence England (on his blog, That the bones you have crushed may thrill) as: “CAFOD appears to be losing its Catholic roots.” The parochial secretary of Fr Raymond Blake in Brighton, Sussex, Mr England himself had criticised CAFOD for hiring a notorious Labour ex-politician as its head of media (marymagdalen.blogspot, 20/9/13)
In the light of CAFOD’s policy and propaganda over half a century, however, one might ask if it was always intended to develop into a secular organism with an anti-God agenda. It is a vehicle for attacking or undermining Catholicism at home and abroad, perverting not only its moral doctrine, but (usually overlooked) its command for individual alms-giving and other good works. The storyline is that nine leading lights from three Catholic women’s associations simply organised a fund-raising fast-day in 1960. Certainly, the hierarchy was moved to launch CAFOD in 1962.
Was a further organisation needed? Britain was already pouring the equivalent of today’s £68½ billion into former colonies while lots of parishes were sending aid overseas on a one-to-one basis, and similar charities, doing social work, already thrived. St Francis Leprosy Guild dates back to 1895. The Association for the Propagation of the Faith spread to England by 1922. Aid to the Church in Need was founded in 1947. Little Way Association already existed when it obtained episcopal approval from Cardinal Godfrey two years before CAFOD.
The answer may lie in wondering why this heart-warming initiative came from very busy women, not humble housewives and housekeepers, and by scrutinising those hailed as the prime movers. Elspeth Orchard acted because “we are all God’s children” but that is a heretical slogan (it sanctifies unbelievers) spread by notorious leftists such as Rev Paul Oestreicher at the then British Council of Churches, which was behind Christian Aid, to justify funds for communist terrorists. Another founder, Jacqueline Stuyt, became a leader of the Ecumenical Forum of European Christian Womenwhose heretical agenda includes interfaith, feminism and ecology.
Given that the lesser seven included a nun traditionally clothed, one is reminded of Communism at Work written by Douglas Hyde [Catholic Truth Society, 1953]. This ex-comrade explained how communist campaigns start behind a respectable front: at a supposedly social gathering an agitator casually asks why-nobody-is-doing-anything-about-it. Idealists and enthusiasts, what Lenin called “useful idiots,” assume that they have spontaneously created a good cause, but existing and extra conspirators supplant or replace them on the committee. As will be seen below, CAFOD today deliberately recruits non-Catholics, while boasting on its website: “We do not preach.”
This theory might explain the original absence of Mildred Neville whose swift support for CAFOD got her made a trustee. In 1959 she had joined a time-hallowed religious study-group which became, six years later, the Catholic Institute of International Relations (CIIR). Under her leadership, this worked hand in glove with CAFOD even when its identification with Soviet goals forced a makeover as Progressio before it collapsed in 2017. It was Neville, already general-secretary of CIIR, who soon suggested that CAFOD employ representatives in every diocese.
Sodom and Gomorrah
So admitted Julian Filochowski, who joined CIIR in 1973 and stood for Parliament in 1979 as a Labour candidate, but was CAFOD’s director for 20 years before moving sideways to Caritas Internationaliswhich is the federation of 165 Catholic relief and development agencies, based in Rome. As long ago as 1981, the Austrian editor of Die Dreizehnte (named after the six dates of Fatima) told me in Linz that all the Catholic aid agencies had been penetrated by local communists.
Filochowski then worked for Progressio whose later director, Christine Allen (Dench), became head of CAFOD this year. This was despite protests about Progressio’s “appalling record” from such Catholics as John Smeaton of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children. Mr Smeaton had earlier tried to get Fr Timothy Radcliffe, that outrageous champion of homosexuality on both sides of the Atlantic and a recent CAFOD trustee, banned from a Divine Mercy conference in Dublin (lifesitenews.com, 2/12/14).
Since homosexuality and communism are twin threads that run right through the history of CAFOD and its associates, along with flouting its charitable status, the name of Filochowski has frequently appeared in the pages of Christian Order Only after widespread Catholic protest did he quit the English agency in 2003, although effectively kicked upstairs.
Two years earlier, he had arranged a Mass (the intended celebrant was CAFOD’s episcopal chaplain, Mgr John Crowley, who remained in the congregation) to celebrate the silver jubilee of his 'partnership' with Martin Pendergast. It was this ex-Carmelite who arranged sacrilegious Masses for sodomites, with the blessing of CAFOD’s Patron, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, in London’s red-light district, Soho.
Mirroring that perverse union, Catholic Relief Service’s vice-president, Rick Estridge entered into a civil 'partnership' with William Goretsas Jr in Baltimore, Maryland, in 2013. CRS is the US partner of CAFOD, both of which are supported by an American defender of homosexuality, James Martin SJ, whose invitation to speak at a CAFOD event was “rescheduled” rather than cancelled due to negative publicity (Tablet, 19/9/17).
Preaching immoral doctrine
CAFOD does not just flaunt perversion, it has long preached wholesale disobedience to the Church’s entire moral doctrine. For example, Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice sent two pages to the bishops of England and Wales, complaining: “On Saturday 25th June 1994, and advertised, in the official programme, as being under the auspices of the Bishops’ Conference, CAFOD, and other groups, organised the “One World, One Family” Day at the Barbican Centre, London.” The open letter of 4 August listed dissenting speakers and their excusing of abortion, fornication, masturbation and contraception.
On 24 September 2004, the London Times published a report headed “Catholic charity supports condom use to tackle AIDS.” It was this that provoked Rod Pead’s article, entitled “Contributing to CAFOD is a Sin!”, in the January 2005 issue of Christian Order.
On 25 February 2005, the Catholic Herald splashed a front-page lead under the banner headline “Traditionalists attack Cafod” regarding sodomy and condoms. Catholic Action Group, based in Essex, had distributed leaflets headed “CAFOD: Knowing better than God and the Pope?” to parish priests throughout England and Wales. The report mentioned frantic excuses by Murphy O’Connor: a man who had overseen so much priestly perversion, liturgical destruction and communist infiltration in his former diocese of Arundel & Brighton that even The Wanderer, thevenerable Catholic weekly in distant Minnesota, branded him “subversive in faith, morals and politics.”
CAFOD has also put homosexual literature into Catholic schools, rationalised as part of its remit to raise awareness of injustice! As recently as 2018, it made an important contribution to a manual from the Catholic Education Service that, under the guise of countering bullying, promotes the concepts of alternative sexuality. Schoolteachers are intended to use this resource for guidelines, lessons and surveys, contrary to Ephesians 5:3, and obviously impingeing on the normal curriculum.
Immorality aside, none of this propaganda has to do with succouring the supposed poor overseas. On the other hand, CAFOD remains quick to interfere politically and doctrinally in other countries. For instance, on 24 February 2014 it issued a condemnation of Uganda’s new law against homosexuality and other measures to improve public morals. Then there are the utterances of its so-called theological advisers, appointments unknown in other charities and surely superfluous in view of the dominant, albeit negligent, episcopal oversight.
One of them, Dr Tina Beattie, lobbied the Polish bishops to accept legal abortion, an evil espoused by various aid agencies such as Oxfam and Christian Aid. Her intervention against outright criminalisation was best refuted by Professor Joseph Shaw at Oxford University (lifesitenews, 27/4/16), but CAFOD excused Beattie’s views as being personal, hinting at a “review.” This is a favourite tactic of CAFOD while waiting for scandals to pass into the collective memory hole.
The embodiment of Modernistic self-contradiction, Beattie admits that “Christianity is incompatible... with abortion,” yet insists that “Early abortion should... be legal”! In her book God's Mother, Eve's Advocate, she also equates the Mass with “an act of (homo) sexual intercourse.” Despite 5,000 signatures for her to go, she continues to advise.
Expense no object
Incidentally, CAFOD’s headquarters, built for £11 million four years ago, houses an entire theological team with salaries of up to £38,000. That is but part of CAFOD’s total staffing costs totalling £16 million. Bearing in mind that 14 of its 437 employees earn between £60,000 and £100,000, not counting benefits, the organisation even contravenes Canon Law. Canon 231 stipulates that “Lay people who are pledged to the special service of the Church” provided that they “conscientiously, earnestly and diligently fulfil this role” … “have the right to a worthy remuneration befitting their condition.”
As the condition of most is unmarried, and since Catholicism is routinely flouted, their inflated incomes are clearly unworthy; the more so since CAFOD and its non-Catholic peers also have many secular critics. Backed by Charlie Elphicke MP, the Charities Commission’s chairman, Sir William Shawcross, criticised Chris Bain in person and 13 similar agencies’ directors for high salaries and excessive pay rises. [Daily Telegraph, 6/8/13] The figures were compiled partly by Priti Patel MP who warned against “lining the pockets of unaccountable charity executives.” [Guardian, 6/8/13]
Yet super-salaries have been defended by CAFOD’s chairman, Bishop John Arnold. His Lordship took a law degree from Oxford in 1975 and studied further at the Council of Legal Education before being called to the bar in the Middle Temple — being ordained only in 1983, and consecrated an auxiliary bishop of Westminster by Archbishop Cormac Murphy O'Connor in 2006 (— to the consternation of one religious superior familiar with his history, the editor of Christian Order was reliably told). He has evaded questions in five letters from me, only writing in July 2014: “This correspondence is now closed.”
CAFOD is a law unto itself: its trustees and managers all appointed; no accountability to stakeholders or shareholders; no votes in the pews. So much so that it can even interfere in British transport policy — typically in league with 13 other pressure groups such as Christian Aid and Friends of the Earth. Their campaign against a proposed airport in the Thames Estuary drew widespread criticism from contributors to Fr Blake’s blogspot as from 24 January 2012. For all CAFOD’s simplistic concern about greenhouse gases, the project was quashed after 24 cogent objections from scientific experts. CAFOD never complained, however, that China was upping its 207 civil airports to 343 by 2025.
That this issue had nothing to do with foreign aid was highlighted by a financial commentator, Christopher Snowdon, who also wrote two devastating reports for the Institute of Economic Affairs in 2012 and 2014 about Big Money collectors:
State-funded super-charities such as Christian Aid, Action Aid, CAFOD and Oxfam are unashamedly political. The literature of aid charities is crammed with references to ‘economic justice’, ‘climate justice’ and ‘tax justice’, and their campaigns include ending biofuels, curbing ‘supermarket power’ and – inevitably -– calling for the state to increase the foreign aid budget.
Thus, in 2007 CAFOD asked bridegrooms not to buy gold wedding-rings from Argos stores. Two years later, CAFOD and Trócaire of Ireland as well as ICCO in the Netherlands were supporting (presumably financially) a campaign against cheap bananas. On 6 July 2017, CAFOD and Christian Aid and Oxfam demonstrated against Sainsbury’s chain for abandoning Fairtrade tea. All this agitation requires staff, paid out of contributions to organise the demonstrations, lobby the government and tell the media. Here is Snowdon again on the legion of propagandists:
Every anti-poverty charity worth its salt has at least one policy manager and one public relations manager. Anyone wishing to contact Oxfam can choose to speak to their Director of Campaigns and Policy, Communications Director, Senior Policy Advisor, Policy and Advocacy Advisor, Head of Media, PR & Media Executive, Media Relations Manager, Ethnic Media Press Officer, Senior PR Manager, PR Press Officer, Junior Press Officer, Senior Climate Change Policy Advisor, Climate Change Campaign Manager, International Artist Liaison Manager, Media and Communications Executive, Media and Communications Officer, and numerous Press Officers, Senior Press Officers, Media Campaigners etcetera ad infinitum.
Oxfam employs 13 and Christian Aid eight and, whilst CAFOD’s ever-changing team has dwindled from seven to five, the ratio of revenue to PR is less than at its peers. Some £30 million is the base supporting each PRO at Oxfam and £12½ million at Christian Aid whereas it is only £8⅓ million at CAFOD. Another good comparison is with the Department of Health that has eight press officers, which means one for every £15,500 million in its budget of £124,000 million. Yet another reason to close down CAFOD!
Moreover, a professor of social policy, Peter Beresford at Brunel, suggests a growing divide between small charitable organisations — with little profile but high energy, real street credibility and beneficiary involvement — and the traditional, large organisations — with big reserves, highly paid chief executives and expensive central London headquarters. Economists would call this Monopolistic Competition and the charitable equivalent of Gresham's Law: bad donating drives out good.
This criticism of non-governmental organisations has just been echoed by the Taxpayers’ Alliance: “These same rules are biased in favour of giant NGOs at the expense of smaller charities.” This is one of the main conclusions in its report of March 2019 entitled First aid: fixing international development. The citizens’ body also argues that it would be more cost-effective for the British government to bypass agencies like CAFOD and go for bilateral giving, besides putting funds towards combating piracy, corruption and criminality that damage struggling economies. Faced with losing £10 million of public money, CAFOD’s response to the 26-page report was a feeble 200 words, largely abstract and emotive.
Pursuing godless politics
CAFOD’s unending clamour for more aid (through its own bank account) can be seen in its bulk postcards and printed petitions, signed by gullible parishioners, to 10 Downing Street as well as at demonstrations, in which Pied Pipers lure youngsters to Whitehall. One of CAFOD's many, proliferating web-pages, with advice on how to get at MPs, shows a photograph captioned: “Diane Abbott MP talking to campaigners at a mass lobby… .” She is a Labour veteran of leftwing causes, including abortion.
CAFOD’s multifarious website also gives instructions about how public pressure can engineer Early Day Motions (a parliamentary tactic to highlight an issue even without a debate) such as Nº 360 and 672 as well as 858 on 27 February 2007 which read: “That this House congratulate CAFOD on its Unearth Justice campaign to raise standards in the global gold mining industry.” This was signed by 60 MPs who included several on Labour’s left wing, notably arch-Marxist Jeremy Corbyn.
Slipping CAFOD’s agenda into parliamentary business is easy, as it has its own agents inside the Palace of Westminster. This is the All-Party Parliamentary Friends of CAFOD, which has its own sullied history. Currently, there are only four members, all with a Catholic background, but even they ought to be lobbying the Government to stop wasting the taxpayers’ money that includes rebates through Gift Aid. Over the past seven years the subsidy has totalled £51½ million — equal to CAFOD’s total 2018 income — and that is without counting extra grants wheedled out of the autonomous Isle of Man and Channel Islands.
There used to be 20 Parliamentary Friends, always under a Labour chairman, including two who voted for homosexual rights and another, Jon Cruddas MP, who was notorious for voting anti-life. CAFOD has taken several MPs to projects overseas, and it brought two Filipino bishops to London to meet another champion of abortion at home and abroad, Clare Short MP when she was responsible for overseas development.
Four of CAFOD’s political do-gooders have been noted for high expenses, including the current chairman, Catherine McKinnell MP, who ranked fourth in 2011 at £147,084. When the Daily Telegraph began exposing widespread corruption on 8 May 2009, one of the worst frauds made CAFOD a laughing-stock. It was revealed that the founder of the Parliamentary Friends and former member of CAFOD’s board, Paul Goggins MP, had not only claimed £45,000 illegally for a London base when his home was in Manchester, but had allowed CAFOD’s unmarried director, Chris Bain, to live there rent-free — also against parliamentary rules. Thou shalt not steal!
Worse, the newspaper revealed on 23 May that Goggins had given £3,829 directly to Bain whose brother, a taxi-driver, had installed a fitted kitchen for them. Somewhere, Goggins also installed “fine leather” sofas, billing £2,800 to the taxpayer. It further emerged that CAFOD’s grant jumped by almost a third to £5¾ million in fiscal 2006 when Goggins was Charities Minister. Although he died in 2014, his environmentally aware son Dominic, the Parliamentary Friends’ secretary, remains CAFOD’s head of governmental relations.
Alas, there is no end of Labour’s cosy relationship. Damian McBride was Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s special adviser until 2009 when it emerged that he had fabricated salacious rumours about leading Conservatives. Two years later, he became CAFOD’s head of media, but returned to political affairs in 2015 following a Catholic outcry against his published memoirs and hard-drinking. Incidentally, the same post had been filled in 1995 by Fiona Bernadette Fox, once a leading member of the Revolutionary Communist Party.
Last but not least, there is Mary Ney. A Cafodist who has evaded questions about her religious background, her controversial municipal career, largely serving Labour councillors, has taken her through Westminster, Haringey, Harrow, Southwark and Greenwich where, despite raking in £190,000 a year as chief executive (nearly £50,000 more than the PM) and in the face of precarious Council finances (at one point requiring “up to £30 million in budget cuts” to vital services - Bexley Times, 12/11/09), she and other members of Greenwich Council were accused of wasting £14,000 of ratepayers’ money to watch the Beijing Olympics (cf. Bexley Times, 20/8/08). She is now at Rotherham, 163 miles from CAFOD’s ecologically-designed headquarters in her home borough of Southwark, yet she remains one of the four trustees with the power to appoint the other nine.