A quick survey of headlines offers any number of reasons not to be cheerful this Christmas: A president and a White House deputy who appear to not like America all that much seek novel ways to violate law, tradition, and constitutional order, provoking fights with the people of Democratic cities they believe represent the “enemy within.” Meanwhile, our nation, arrogant and puffed up, puts America first, turning inward and away from former obligations to vulnerable people everywhere.
An analysis from British medical journal The Lancet predicts that by 2030 more than 14 million people will die because of ruinous reductions in international aid begun by the Trump administration’s bulldozing of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Alistair Dutton, secretary-general for Caritas Internationalis, the umbrella organization for the Catholic world’s various humanitarian and development efforts, somberly assured me in September that The Lancet figure will prove a deep undercount of the suffering.
At the end of 2024, an estimated 123 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced because of persecution, drought, hunger, and conflict. And though the U.S. door has been shut to refugees, their numbers have only increased. And it’s not just the United States failing to support these people: A United Nations fund to address a world in need, already substantially cut back to reflect the accelerating stinginess of international donors, was only 20 percent funded by the middle of 2025. Wealthy nations, like the United States, are simply dropping out.
Things seem headed in the wrong direction, and no one seems to know what to do about it. But Americans are not the only ones to feel quagmired in this winter of great discontent. A Pew Research Center survey found that people all over the world are unhappy with their political systems and elected officials, with a majority of people in 20 of the 25 countries studied believing “their political system needs either major changes or complete reform.”
We don’t have to wait for governments to do better. This year, perhaps the common, fed-up people, acting in solidarity and mercy, might have to show governments the way ahead.
During his address to the U.N. on September 29, Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, Holy See secretary for relations with states and international organizations, tried to offer the U.N. a vote of confidence during a time when its mission, even its viability, has come to be doubted. Its core values of “fostering international peace, development and universal human rights . . . are all the more important in an increasingly fragmented world,” the archbishop said.
He reiterated a proposal from the Holy See that a global fund be established, sustained by a fraction of the world’s military expenditures, to “eradicate poverty and hunger, promote sustainable development and address climate change.”
“These are indispensable foundations of lasting peace,” he told the General Assembly.
That sword-bending fund sadly does not yet exist, though the U.N. does maintain a number of foundations to help bankroll its various humanitarian enterprises. Other humanitarian campaigns, Catholic Relief Services and Catholic Charities USA among them, have also suffered significant fiscal blows during this period of withdrawal and globalized indifference. They would surely benefit from our redoubled attention.
Another Pew study, this one in 2023, found that 85 percent of Americans believe their government “doesn’t care what people like me think.” This Christmas might be a good time to test that belief. As we welcome the Prince of Peace, maybe we could all reach out to our elected representatives to let them know that we citizens want our tax dollars to be used to help people, not to prop up the defense industry.
This article also appears in the December 2025 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 90, No. 12, page 42). Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
Image: Unsplash.com/Nick Sorockin
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