The John-Henry Westen Show - December 31, 2025


SCANDAL： Child Trafficking CRISIS met with SILENCE by Pope Leo


Episode Stats


Length

25 minutes

Words per minute

146.95436

Word count

3,696

Sentence count

256

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Hate speech

5

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Pro-Life Activist Liz Yor joins me in Rome to speak about Catholic Charities and the trafficking of children. She has been fighting for children in the most difficult areas of the justice system for decades. She is a pro-life activist who fights for children.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Catholic Charities knows full well that what they did with these unaccompanied minor children 1.00
00:00:06.920 is absolutely criminal.
00:00:11.620 This is going to be a bit of a tough one because I am with a lawyer who pulls no punches.
00:00:20.380 Because she's a lawyer who defends children. 1.00
00:00:23.500 She's been involved in working in the hardest areas where children are abused
00:00:28.100 and she fights for those children.
00:00:30.080 She loves children.
00:00:30.960 She's a pro-life activist.
00:00:34.040 This, you might call a little lady, is no one to be messed with. 1.00
00:00:38.320 This is Liz Yor.
00:00:39.540 Liz, thank you for joining us.
00:00:40.780 Oh, my pleasure.
00:00:41.720 God bless you.
00:00:42.680 Let's begin as we always do with the sign of the cross.
00:00:45.220 In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.
00:00:49.240 Amen.
00:00:49.920 Liz, you are here in Rome, in the Eternal City, where we just had a press conference,
00:00:55.840 where you were very frank with regard to the new Pope, an American Pope, from your hometown even.
00:01:04.480 So you speak with an authority on him, on his record, but especially about children and the trafficking of children.
00:01:16.100 I'd like to ask you, first of all, what in the world is happening in the United States with the bishops,
00:01:22.240 with Pope Leo, with this immigration thing, and it's mixed up with trafficking of children.
00:01:27.040 Can you sort this out for us?
00:01:28.140 As we know, in the last four years, during the Biden administration, there have been at least 452,000,
00:01:37.460 what they call unaccompanied minor children, who came illegally across the border.
00:01:43.120 Some were brought in by cartels, others just walked in themselves.
00:01:47.020 These are children with no parent, no guardian, no family member with them.
00:01:52.020 They are literally children that have Post-it notes on their clothes with an address that they should be delivered to in the United States.
00:02:03.180 452,000 of these children are now missing.
00:02:07.680 The Trump administration has recently put a task force together to look for them.
00:02:14.580 There have been approximately 30,000 who have been located.
00:02:18.560 But keep in mind, John Henry, these are children who didn't have proper identity,
00:02:24.140 didn't have background checks or pictures, or any kind of identification with them when they came across.
00:02:31.680 So it's literally looking for a blank slate.
00:02:35.140 And many of these children were placed by Catholic Charities,
00:02:39.260 one of the premier child organizations that was given up to $8 billion by the federal government,
00:02:48.560 to move these children into the United States and place them with, quote-unquote, sponsors.
00:02:55.360 What happened was that we now know that nearly half a million of these children are missing.
00:03:03.920 And as a result, there's been a number of task force in Congress,
00:03:09.200 an inspector general report, two of them, as a matter of fact,
00:03:12.560 to find out what's happened to these children.
00:03:14.680 They've done spot checks.
00:03:16.720 And what they found is these children were placed in homes with people that had no background check.
00:03:24.940 Can you imagine just dropping—I call it the dump-and-run program of Catholic Charities,
00:03:30.660 dropping these children who don't speak English from approximately 170 countries with sponsors.
00:03:37.480 The vast majority of these sponsors are illegal aliens themselves.
00:03:42.820 The sponsors have no background checks.
00:03:44.700 There's been no inspection of the homes.
00:03:47.360 There's been no follow-up care.
00:03:49.540 There's no verification of any identification or no DNA taken,
00:03:55.440 no medical background checks on these children.
00:03:58.820 So literally, they were brought in and dumped into the interior of the United States with no follow-up whatsoever.
00:04:08.920 I've worked with Catholic Charities for 30 years.
00:04:11.540 Catholic Charities in every single diocese in the United States handled, in the old days, foster care.
00:04:18.680 They hired people to be foster parents.
00:04:22.200 They did background checks on parents who were going to be foster parents.
00:04:26.200 They checked the homes to make sure they had a proper bed and food.
00:04:31.740 They did training of these foster parents for months on end to ensure that children,
00:04:39.240 American children who were abused and neglected, were placed in safe homes
00:04:44.040 and that these children could thrive and not be exploited.
00:04:48.440 So Catholic Charities knows full well that what they did with these unaccompanied minor children is absolutely criminal.
00:04:59.700 They threw them to the wolves.
00:05:02.480 And anybody else, maybe you would say, oh, they just didn't know.
00:05:06.760 But Catholic Charities has written a manual on how to vet sponsors and vet parents, foster parents.
00:05:14.980 So, nevertheless, because of the money and because of the rapidity of the Biden administration
00:05:23.660 and moving these kids over the border as quick as possible,
00:05:28.060 they threw out the manual and the guidebook and all the precautions.
00:05:32.040 I mean, can you imagine not even doing a background check on a man that you're going to place a child with?
00:05:38.260 And so these children are, we know that the procedures were thrown out the window.
00:05:45.940 We know also that they did a spa check of some of these children.
00:05:52.040 Some of these children were found dead.
00:05:55.960 Some of them were, in fact, trafficked by their sponsors.
00:05:59.140 Some of them were abused and neglected by their sponsors.
00:06:02.600 Many were not in school or being fed properly or given medical care.
00:06:08.000 It is absolutely a nightmare of proportions that we cannot imagine.
00:06:13.820 And the problem is, is that, you know, the largest charity doing this was Catholic Charities,
00:06:19.600 knowing full well in order to protect children the hoops that they should have done and did not do.
00:06:27.140 The situation we have now is, I don't know, we're not going to find these 400,000 children,
00:06:33.120 plus children that are missing.
00:06:36.480 And we know one thing, John Henry, I talked about this in my speech,
00:06:41.000 where vulnerable children are is where predators are.
00:06:45.420 And this illegal immigration invasion with unaccompanied minor children is a paradise for predators. 1.00
00:06:54.580 There's a networking pipeline that's going straight to the traffickers.
00:07:01.020 And so it just, it's so disheartening, not only as a child advocate, but as a kid, you know,
00:07:07.260 I admired Catholic Charities in the past.
00:07:10.440 They did a good job.
00:07:11.740 There's no excuse in the world except greed.
00:07:16.320 And these bishops, let me tell you, these bishops know full well
00:07:20.500 what was required of their Catholic Charity agencies before the illegal immigration crisis.
00:07:27.440 They knew what those people were required to do under state law and federal law.
00:07:33.260 The laws were thrown out the window.
00:07:35.540 The number of children missing is like the size of the population of Bologna in Italy.
00:07:41.200 I mean, half a million children missing.
00:07:44.240 To this very day, I think, where are these kids?
00:07:47.000 What are they enduring?
00:07:49.220 It's just unimaginable.
00:07:51.780 And so this is on the watch of the Catholic bishops.
00:07:55.840 Here they are missing in the hundreds of thousands.
00:08:00.300 They've done an investigation.
00:08:01.620 They found 30,000.
00:08:02.940 They've investigated them and found all these abuses trafficked and neglected and abused and all sorts of things.
00:08:08.740 The weird part for me is I've been listening to the bishops, and the bishop's encouraged by the pope.
00:08:16.540 Let's play this clip.
00:08:17.320 This is a clip of one of the bishops going to Rome, meeting with the pope on the issue,
00:08:23.180 and the pope's sort of encouraging him to speak out.
00:08:26.780 And he's saying, well, we have been speaking out, but there's politics involved.
00:08:30.480 And the pope's like, no, speak out.
00:08:32.380 Watch this clip.
00:08:33.380 I was struck at the beginning.
00:08:34.540 It talks about the feeling of powerlessness, which I thank you so much.
00:08:38.280 And I think it's so important that we as church give a message of hope in the midst of these horrible struggles,
00:08:47.560 what's going on in so many cities in the United States right now.
00:08:51.700 It just, I mean, at least the church cannot be silent.
00:08:57.040 You've spoken very strongly.
00:08:59.320 You know, we're trying to do the same in our country and yet not get into the political fray.
00:09:06.480 And that's the best that we can.
00:09:08.440 And I know, I mean, even with the Congress, there are challenges.
00:09:12.320 Yeah.
00:09:13.340 I mean, that's one place I should be.
00:09:15.200 I wish there were a strong voice in my own voice.
00:09:18.260 Even though, I mean, the president of the Congress to speak out, you know, there have been,
00:09:23.380 there's been some good movement in that sense.
00:09:25.220 But I certainly have to keep contingent with courage.
00:09:30.100 The weirdest thing for me is that if you're saying that the bishops know,
00:09:36.900 we've never heard the bishops speak for the children at all.
00:09:41.120 We've heard them about immigration, the need to, you know, we have to have humane immigration.
00:09:46.420 And they've never spoken for the kids.
00:09:50.300 Hello, my friends.
00:09:51.320 I want to thank you so much for your prayers, for your support for Life State News.
00:09:54.340 We couldn't do this without you.
00:09:55.720 We're right here in Rome, in the Eternal City.
00:09:58.940 We're not going to cede Rome.
00:10:01.340 We're not going to give up on the church.
00:10:04.400 We're going to continue to fight despite everything they throw at us.
00:10:07.960 And we need to do that with your help.
00:10:10.280 I would beg for your support so that we can continue this work.
00:10:13.880 It's coming up end of year, and I know many do end of year donations.
00:10:19.280 Please consider LifeSite News and your giving.
00:10:21.340 God bless you, my friends, and thank you.
00:10:23.540 Now, one word about human trafficking, which they know is happening,
00:10:28.500 because we know the whistleblowers are telling them,
00:10:31.240 whistleblowers from Catholic charities are telling them what's happening.
00:10:34.800 And we know we have a pope who understands English.
00:10:37.740 It's his first language.
00:10:39.140 And he knows full well, because he was in Chicago for many years.
00:10:45.400 He knows about this issue.
00:10:47.840 And yet, silence.
00:10:49.400 All they are talking about is immigration as a human right and ignoring the catastrophe. 0.98
00:10:56.800 Talk about a human rights crisis of these children.
00:11:00.840 And yet, they don't want us to talk about it,
00:11:03.000 because what they're going to have to admit is that this was a money deal.
00:11:07.460 That's all it was.
00:11:09.160 They got $8 billion to do this operation for the Biden administration.
00:11:15.260 And to think that the pope would demand that they be louder about more immigration
00:11:20.940 and about criticizing the Trump administration that's desperately trying to find these children
00:11:27.540 and to secure the border, because it's not a walk in the daisies.
00:11:32.820 This is cartel members, dangerous, violent men who are raping children and women
00:11:39.400 as they're coming up to the border and then putting them into the human trafficking pipeline.
00:11:45.440 And to see the silence on the part of the bishops and the pope about this human trafficking crisis.
00:11:52.260 And by the way, the same thing is happening in Europe.
00:11:56.080 We're seeing the same thing with human trafficking, with the exploitation of women and children,
00:12:03.240 with illegal immigration, because it was a mass invasion.
00:12:08.500 And yet, they want to pretend that it's not happening.
00:12:11.620 But Americans are smart.
00:12:14.460 Americans are getting their information elsewhere.
00:12:17.240 And they realize that there's a human trafficking crisis.
00:12:22.020 And I can't warn people enough.
00:12:25.720 For generations, we are going to be dealing with this nightmare of children that were brought in 1.00
00:12:32.340 without speaking the language, without a parent, a guardian, a friendly face,
00:12:37.080 and thrown into this country at the mercy of the most violent, sick pedophiles and predators.
00:12:44.480 And they have nowhere to turn.
00:12:46.740 And by the way, the Biden administration created a hotline for these children and sponsors to call
00:12:55.260 in case they needed help.
00:12:56.640 They received 65,000 calls on the hotline, and there was no one to answer the phone.
00:13:02.860 So those that have even had the luck to know the phone number for the hotline had no help at all.
00:13:09.340 So they were just literally stranded.
00:13:12.280 The dump and run operation of Catholic Charities.
00:13:16.000 As a Catholic, it just pains me.
00:13:18.560 I read the comments.
00:13:19.880 Catholics are well aware of what this once great institution that was supported by,
00:13:26.800 not the federal government, but by the pew sitters, right?
00:13:29.820 The people who would, in their Catholic Charities envelope, support Catholic Charities.
00:13:35.020 And now that kind of charity is gone.
00:13:38.440 The answer to the federal gods.
00:13:41.120 And the federal gods had an agenda, not caring about the kids.
00:13:45.680 And so that's what we're dealing with.
00:13:47.880 And it's literally all about the money.
00:13:50.400 And Pope Leo has no excuse.
00:13:52.580 He knows darn well what's happening because the bishops are telling him.
00:13:57.460 The bishops are telling him.
00:13:58.660 They're not speaking out loud and saying, you know, we have to stop this.
00:14:02.660 No, that would mean, that would hurt the bottom line, wouldn't it?
00:14:07.040 I'm almost speechless and I don't get speechless much.
00:14:10.740 I'm not surprised that the Biden administration would set up a line and not answer it when abused kids are calling it.
00:14:17.020 I'm sorry to say that doesn't faze me.
00:14:18.760 But for the bishops and the Pope, who have just come through the abuse crisis, where they owe abused kids everything and are going bankrupt because of payments,
00:14:35.860 you'd think that, oh, trafficked kids, we should always speak for them.
00:14:41.160 But no, that's what's blowing my mind.
00:14:44.740 Yeah, I mean, they've lost all credibility, haven't they?
00:14:46.980 I mean, they didn't protect children during the clergy abuse cases.
00:14:50.920 They thought of their own clericalism and protecting, you know, their bishops, their priests, and the bishops protected the priests.
00:14:59.660 So you would think this would have been an opportunity.
00:15:02.920 We've learned our lesson.
00:15:05.340 We know the suffering of abuse and neglected children.
00:15:08.660 We have gone through our own Golgotha and we are going to show and we're going to speak up to the Biden administration.
00:15:18.020 No, we are not going to facilitate this human trafficking nightmare.
00:15:23.260 And, you know, had they done that, John Henry, it would have ended everything.
00:15:28.420 Had the bishops as one voice, can you imagine, said, look, this is what we're seeing at the border.
00:15:33.920 And they're asking us to do this, not vet, do DNA, throw these kids in unvetted homes. 1.00
00:15:40.080 You know, we will not do this.
00:15:41.540 And we want the American people to know that.
00:15:44.220 Obviously, we have our sins and problems in the church, but we have learned our lesson.
00:15:49.500 But instead, $8 billion more.
00:15:53.240 They've taken the grants and remained complicitly silent.
00:15:57.960 It's just so maddening.
00:16:00.580 We start off thinking they have learned their lesson with regard to their own shuffling off of abusers.
00:16:08.420 There is a theory that says they haven't learned their lesson.
00:16:14.380 They learned a better PR so they could fake it more.
00:16:18.040 And you've revealed recently that that might not only pertain to some of the bishops that we know, but might also pertain to the Bishop of Rome.
00:16:26.520 Well, right. I mean, I've been looking very closely and talking to a number of people in the Chicleo case, the Peruvian case.
00:16:33.840 Where Pope Leo was bishop before becoming pope.
00:16:37.000 Yes. And where three girls from age 9 to 13 were preyed upon by a very popular, very talented priest, Father Lute.
00:16:46.300 And as adults, they went to the Pope or went to Bishop Prevost and told him about this abuse.
00:16:56.860 And this is in 2022.
00:17:00.040 Remember Boston Spotlight and the charter was in Dallas charter was in 2002.
00:17:05.300 2002. So we have nearly 20 years of learning our lesson, of putting in place some very secure policies, supposedly.
00:17:14.360 And what did Leo say?
00:17:16.400 He was very kind in talking to the girls.
00:17:19.500 He was just very sympathetic, understood their pain.
00:17:22.460 But he just sent them to the civil authorities.
00:17:27.320 And what did he do with the priest under the Dallas charter and under additional charters that have come through,
00:17:34.420 which he certainly knew about because he was in the United States as the prior general of the Augustinians.
00:17:41.360 He moved the priest to another parish, told him he couldn't hear confessions, but could continue to say mass.
00:17:50.260 I mean, that's what Bernie Law did.
00:17:52.420 You know, I mean, have we learned no lessons from, you know, from the Boston massacre?
00:17:58.540 And he moved this priest and the girls had said that there were other children that were being abused by this priest.
00:18:09.880 Now, keep in mind, this is, you know, a pedophile priest.
00:18:13.300 You know, these were prepubescent girls. 1.00
00:18:16.180 And, you know, supposedly, according to the girls now, they have written a letter saying that the investigation conducted by Bishop Prevost was a joke.
00:18:27.740 That he supposedly sent a file of this joke investigation to the Vatican and told the girls to go to the civil authorities,
00:18:38.340 which, of course, he knew full well that the statute of limitations had run and that there was nothing that the civil authorities had done.
00:18:46.500 So it is a classic case that Pope Leo demonstrated when he was bishop of Chicleo that he was not following the guidelines,
00:18:59.560 that he was actually going backwards instead of forwards in the church.
00:19:04.860 And there was recently, just a few weeks ago, just a very, very powerful letter from the main victim who had talked to Prevost.
00:19:15.360 And what did she find out?
00:19:17.680 She found out that there was not a canonical trial of this priest in the Vatican when Leo was there,
00:19:25.140 both as the cardinal in charge of the bishop's dicastery and now as Leo,
00:19:30.840 and that this priest, Father Lute, was given a dispensation,
00:19:35.420 which means he's off on his own, no finding of guilt.
00:19:39.420 And the girls were told that this was supposed to be a punishment. 0.99
00:19:45.180 They were lured into thinking, oh, we took care of it, when, in fact, it was a get-out-of-jail-free card.
00:19:51.480 Tell us about that, because that was the McCarrick plan.
00:19:53.940 Yes, yes, exactly.
00:19:55.360 So describe that, because for an attorney, that makes total sense, but for the lady, we're like, wait, what is that?
00:20:00.200 When there is a file of a clergy abuse case in the United States, it's sent to the dicastery for the doctrine of the faith.
00:20:08.940 If it involves a bishop, it goes to the bishop's dicastery.
00:20:12.400 And there is an additional, based on the investigation, in the original Chancery Diocese, there is a review.
00:20:23.320 There is set up a judicial due process for not only the victims, but also for the priest.
00:20:30.360 In the Vatican, a canonical trial to examine the evidence, to hear evidence,
00:20:36.340 and to make a determination, a finding, a criminal finding, of what exactly happened in this particular case.
00:20:44.980 It's very important for victims to have the judicial process undermining the importance of being believed by the church,
00:20:53.080 at long last, right, especially the Vatican.
00:20:56.300 This was all short-circuited.
00:20:58.640 He did not have his canonical trial, this Father Lute, who, you know, in the comments that this woman talks about,
00:21:06.400 it sounds like he was a very prominent priest, highly respected by Leo.
00:21:13.000 And so the case goes to the Vatican, and out of nowhere, the Vatican issues its dispensation.
00:21:20.140 There's no trial, and he's a free man.
00:21:22.720 There's nothing to say that this man had conducted abuse on these victims.
00:21:30.100 And what's especially heinous is in Peru.
00:21:34.100 It's a different culture.
00:21:36.340 And these girls are being persecuted in Peru, especially since there's been no finding of guilt by the Vatican.
00:21:45.700 And they're being harassed and saying that they're picking on this priest and being mean.
00:21:51.760 And, you know, as in the United States, contrast that to the United States, where there's a, after 25 years or 30 years,
00:21:58.660 there's been a whole different attitude, but not in Peru.
00:22:02.160 So it also underscores, I think, the bravery of these girls to go and not only tell the bishop,
00:22:11.780 but also then to take on the pope and call him out for his dispensation of this priest.
00:22:18.860 And they're demanding to speak to the pope and find out what exactly happened.
00:22:25.480 I would add also that we should have the entire file disclosed.
00:22:30.200 There needs to be transparency.
00:22:32.360 We should also know everything that went on in Chicleo.
00:22:36.200 We want to see the emails between the Chicleo diocese and the Vatican.
00:22:41.120 I mean, this, to me, is just so outrageous.
00:22:45.800 And it shows that in this case, and based on some other cases in Chicago that I've looked at with respect to Leo,
00:22:53.460 that he does not take these cases seriously.
00:22:57.020 You know, John Henry, we were talking at the time of the conclave.
00:23:00.320 If they do anything, elect a pope that has a sense of seriousness and appreciation of what the church has gone through and has a clean record.
00:23:11.780 And all this was swirling around before the conclave, well before the conclave, before even Bergoglio passed away.
00:23:20.500 So I'm very discouraged.
00:23:24.040 I think we need to be behind these girls.
00:23:27.580 And the other thing is, is without a canonical trial, there could be other victims out there, both in Peru, that have not stepped forward.
00:23:39.160 They're not going to step forward anymore, are they?
00:23:41.360 No, not after this, you know, dispensation, meaning he's on his own, he's free to conduct his private life, and there was no finding.
00:23:50.280 So there's a chilling effect on the victims.
00:23:54.140 And the three girls who did come forward claimed that there are other victims here.
00:23:59.120 And for all we know, there can be other files on this priest in the Vatican.
00:24:03.520 We will never know.
00:24:05.740 So, I mean, I think it's 20 years step backwards with Leo.
00:24:11.020 And, you know, he should really know.
00:24:12.920 He was raised in Chicago.
00:24:14.820 He worked in the United States.
00:24:18.100 He understands how the clergy abuse crisis has rocked the church.
00:24:24.480 If anything, he should have been especially attuned to this issue and moved with dispatch and transparency.
00:24:35.480 I'm not confident.
00:24:37.140 I think we're really going to have to be vigilant about other cases and continue to demand.
00:24:43.760 We want answers from what happened in Chiclayo.
00:24:46.860 Liz, you are, ladies and gentlemen.
00:24:48.520 That is why this is one, Laurie, you don't want to mess with.
00:24:51.860 Thank you so much, Liz.
00:24:52.760 God bless you.
00:24:53.660 And God bless all of you.
00:24:55.380 And we'll see you next time.
00:24:56.280 Hello, it's Fr. David Nix.
00:25:02.340 If you like this content, please click the link in the description for more like this.
00:25:07.160 Thank you all for watching, and God bless you.