From The New York Times:
As the Trump administration escalates its aggressive deportation campaign, Roman Catholic bishops across the United States are raising objections to the treatment of migrants and challenging the president’s policy.
For years many bishops focused their most vocal political engagement on ending abortion, rarely putting as much capital behind any other issue. Many supported President Trump’s actions to overturn Roe v. Wade, and targeted Democratic Catholic politicians who supported abortion access.
But now they are increasingly invoking Pope Leo XIV’s leadership and Pope Francis’s legacy against Mr. Trump’s immigration actions, and prioritizing humane treatment of immigrants as a top public issue. They are protesting the president’s current domestic policy bill in Congress, showing up at court hearings to deter Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and urging Catholics and non-Catholics alike to put compassion for humans ahead of political allegiances.
The image in Los Angeles and elsewhere of ICE agents seizing people in Costco parking lots and carwashes “rips the illusion that’s being portrayed, that this is an effort which is focused on those who have committed significant crimes,” said Cardinal Robert W. McElroy of Washington, in an interview from Rome.
“The realities are becoming more ominous,” he said. “It is becoming clearer that this is a wholesale, indiscriminate deportation effort aimed at all those who came to the country without papers.”
Cardinal McElroy, who has frequently spoken against Mr. Trump’s immigration policies, was named the archbishop of Washington as one of Pope Francis’s final major actions in the United States, reflecting the Vatican’s desire to counter the Trump administration’s immigration agenda. Immigration arrests are rising sharply, and ICE has a goal of apprehending 3,000 people a day.
“A very large number of Catholic bishops, and religious leaders in general, are outraged by the steps which the administration is taking to expel mostly hardworking, good people from the United States,” Cardinal McElroy said.
… “We as a church unfortunately don’t have the kind of megaphone that the administration does,” said Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso. “It’s a real challenge to reach even Catholics, especially when maybe one out of five who identify as Catholic make it to Mass on Sunday.”
Pope Leo XIV, an American and Peruvian citizen, has from the beginning of his papacy called for the need to respect the dignity of every person, “citizens and immigrants alike.” After his election in May, his brother John Prevost said that Leo was “not happy with what’s going on with immigration. I know that for a fact.” But so far the new pope has not directly weighed in publicly on Mr. Trump’s deportation campaign.
