The Catholic Diocese of Greensburg will no longer participate in the U.S. bishops' anti-poverty program, which some conservative activists say has funded abortion-rights and gay-rights supporters.

Bishop Lawrence Brandt said he intends to create a Diocesan Poverty Relief Fund to receive the money that formerly went to the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.

The Greensburg diocese sent nearly $22,000 to the campaign last year.

"This change allows our diocese to know exactly how the poverty relief funds are spent. It also assures the parishioners who make generous contributions to the diocese that they are helping their neighbors right here in southwestern Pennsylvania," he said at a Thursday night benefit dinner for Catholic Charities of Greensburg.

Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburgh is on the bishops' subcommittee that oversees the campaign, and he is the chairman of a working group assigned to respond to the complaints. Bishop Zubik, who was released from the hospital yesterday after back surgery, was unavailable for comment. But a preliminary report that he sent last month to the U.S. bishops' administrative committee called for administrative changes at the campaign while supporting its overall mission and accomplishments. His report, which has not been released, was obtained from a source outside of the Pittsburgh diocese.

Bishop Brandt said he decided to stop taking collections for the campaign last year after receiving many complaints about it. He is the fourth Pennsylvania bishop to do so, following the dioceses of Altoona-Johnstown, Harrisburg and Allentown, according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. He is also the ninth of the nation's 195 diocesan bishops to withdraw from the campaign.

The Catholic Campaign for Human Development was founded in 1969 to fund efforts to eradicate the causes of poverty. In 2009, it awarded more than $7.7 million to 250 community and church groups. It doesn't give money directly to the poor, but funds self-help groups in which poor people work to fix problems such as poor schools or slum housing. Some conservative groups have long complained that this strategy gives the campaign a liberal bias. But criticism reached new heights last year.

A coalition of conservative lay Catholic organizations, the best known of which is the American Life League, accused the campaign of funding groups that supported legal abortion, gay marriage and Marxism. Claims were made that a recipient organization in Ohio listed the National Organization for Women, the International Socialist Organization and some gay rights groups as "friends and colleagues" on its website. The campaign was criticized because 31 grant recipients had ties to the Center for Community Change, whose board members included women who had worked for other organizations that advocate legal abortion.

At last November's meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Bishop Roger Morin of Biloxi, Miss., chairman of the subcommittee for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, forcefully defended the campaign, suggesting that many critics had problems with Catholic social teaching about justice for the poor.

While some critics raise legitimate concerns, he said, "a few with their own ideological or political agendas repeat and spread outrageous claims that the bishops are funding abortion, attacks on the family and other untruths. For these groups, this seems to be just another way to attack the church and its shepherds, the same voices that constantly insist we are unfaithful in our teaching or do not care about the unborn."

Any grant recipients who are found to have positions or practices that violate Catholic teaching are dropped from the program and must return whatever they received, he said. That occurred with five of the last 250 grants, according to Bishop Zubik's report.

Bishop Zubik's brief preliminary report said that the campaign needs to clarify its Catholic identity and principles and clearly tell applicants what types of activity recipients cannot engage in. But he pointed out that 98 percent of the grants made last year posed no legitimate moral problems.

"I am hopeful and confident these efforts will build on the many strengths and achievements of CCHD to bring good news to the poor, liberty to captives and to set the downtrodden free," he wrote, quoting from the Bible.

But officials in the Greensburg diocese were troubled that the campaign gave no money to alleviate poverty directly and said that the new Diocesan Poverty Relief Fund would do just that.

Washington correspondent Daniel Malloy writes the "Pittsburgh On The Potomac" blog exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.