The bishops, Leo, Trump and due process
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Pope Leo XIV made headlines Tuesday calling for the “humane” treatment of detained migrants in the United States.
In the most recent of his impromptu press conferences as he departed Castelgandolfo following his day off, the pope was asked about the U.S. bishops’ statement last week which condemned the “indiscriminate mass deportation of people.”
Leo’s response was a fulsome endorsement of the American bishops, calling it “a very important statement” which he “appreciates very much.”
“We have to look for ways of treating people humanely, treating people with the dignity that they have,” he said. “I think the bishops have been very clear in what they’ve said, and I would just invite all people in the United States to listen.”
The pope’s unqualified support for the USCCB will, no doubt, be welcomed by the conference members — at their plenary meeting in Baltimore last week the bishops were at pains to demonstrate the kind of unity which it is clear Leo expects of them.
But the American bishops, among them now the bishop of Rome, have faced predictably instant reactions, with many outlets reporting the bishops’ letter and papal endorsement as the Church’s emergence as a bonafide opposition force to the Trump administration.
Meanwhile, online, some supporters of Trump have accused the hierarchy of taking a simplistic partisan side in a complicated issue, and failing to express solidarity with poorer Americans economically impacted by mass migration and illegal immigrants. Others have praised Leo’s statement as balanced, and in rhetorical opposition to the text from the U.S. conference.
The White House itself has, thus far, not engaged directly with the bishops’ or the pope’s comments on the issue — nor has the administration commented directly on previous papal statements on the subject.
It seems unlikely, though, that the administration and the Church hierarchy can talk around and past each other forever.
The emerging question is how united, pointed, and constructive the bishops will be in their message to the White House, and what hearing they might get — if any.
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Since the Trump administration began its concerted campaign of mass migrant detentions and deportations earlier this year, there has been public pushback from bishops across the country — and across the commonly perceived left-right divide in the conference.
Figures as diverse as incoming USCCB president Archbishop Paul Coakley and Chicago’s Cardinal Blase Cupich have spoken out against the climate of fear among immigrant communities, and Catholics in particular.
More recently, an ICE detention center in Illinois has become a particular flashpoint, with local pastors leading marches and prayer vigils outside the Broadview facility and protesting the refusal by authorities to allow them to provide pastoral and sacramental care for detainees.
But even as bishops have spoken out for the rights of detainees, some local clerics have levelled fire also against them for participating in President Trump’s religious liberty commission.
At the same time, they — and the body of bishops — have largely steered clear of denouncing the administration as such, expressing instead concern at the treatment of detained migrants, their rights to due process, and their right to pastoral care in detention. Indeed Bishop Barron went out of his way to make just such a distinction over his own interventions on the issue.
It is worth noting that, media characterizations to one side, Pope Leo has done much the same.
In fact, in his comments to reporters yesterday in support of the USCCB statement, the pope underlined his primary concern with the treatment of detained and deported migrants and their access to legal rights — not taking a position on the Trump administration’s broader stated priority of cracking down on illegal immigration.
“If people are in the United States illegally, there are ways to treat that, there are courts, there’s a system of justice,” said Leo. “I think there are a lot of problems in the system; no one has said that the United States should have open borders. I think every country has a right to determine who and how and when people enter.”
“But when people are living good lives, and many of them for 10, 15, 20 years,” continued the pope, “to treat them in a way that is extremely disrespectful to say the least — and there has been some violence, unfortunately — I think the bishops have been very clear in what they’ve said and I’d just invite all people in the United States to listen to them.”
The pope put his emphasis on due process for detainees — language the U.S. bishops themselves tried to add to their own statement last week — and he pointedly declined to take issue with the right of the administration to deploy the justice system to address illegal immigration.
The window, then, would appear to be open for bishops to press the administration on the specific issues highlighted by the pope in his echoing their own statement — that of the due process and religious freedom rights for detainees.
Critics, both within and outside of the Church, of the administration’s priority of mass deportation of undocumented migrants would likely greet any such concessions as small beer, but a willingness by the White House to ensure, say, access by clergy to minister to detainees would set up an interesting series of questions:
Would the bishops be willing to work with the administration to achieve access to sites like Broadview, and to hail it as progress in a dialogue? And would the administration — including its many prominent Catholic members — be open to any substantive conversation on broader issues of due process and mass deportation?
These are very much open to speculation, and to future events.
The bishops, thus far, have enjoyed the public and explicit support of Pope Leo in their efforts — and papal approval is something the bishops both value for its own sake and for the heft it gives their own interventions.
How Leo might respond to any small measure of progress, offering either encouragement or calling for a harder line, could open up new possibilities or close them off.
Many political observers have concluded that the Trump administration is flouting due process for detainees as an end itself, broadening executive power and intimidating migrant populations, rather than a means to mass deportations of those illegally present in the country.
That said, the administration, and the president himself, would likely consider any words of papal approval, however guarded or limited, to be a PR coup worth offering at least something to secure. And after initially bristling at any papal comments on administration actions, some among the MAGA movement are already hailing the pope’s repetition of the Church’s long-standing position on states’ rights to control their own borders.
At the same time, there are likely some among the bishops, though by no means a majority, who might consider small steps of progress not worth the effort of engagement — or possible accusations of “collaboration” — with the administration.
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