Pope Francis Condemns Immigration Measures as Partisan Fault Lines Widen in the Church
Pope Francis making a public appearance outside the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace on June 18th, 2023. Source: Vatican Media
In a recent letter to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Pope Francis delivered a bold rebuke of recent immigration policies from the Trump administration, drawing on biblical themes to condemn what he calls the “major crisis” of mass deportation and highlighting the moral implications of such measures. Comparing the journey of Jesus Christ to the modern-day experience of those seeking refuge, the Pope says that the Christian conscience “cannot fail to…express its disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality.”
Vice President J.D. Vance, a Catholic convert, appeared to be another source of the letter’s criticism, following his recent defense of the Trump administration’s restrictive border policies under the religious concept of ordo amoris, which defines a hierarchy of Christian love, prioritizing one’s family, neighbors, and community above others. In his letter, Pope Francis responds to this, contending that “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups” and that the “true ordo amoris” is discovered through love that is open to all.
This exchange makes the Pope the second high-ranking Catholic official to criticize Vance in the past month, after the recent controversy in which Vance accused the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) of using their refugee resettlement programs to profit from federal funds. These remarks prompted a vehement denial from New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who said Vance’s allegations were “scurrilous” and “nasty.” The USCCB, to whom the Pope’s letter was addressed, was brief in their response to the pontiff but clear in their approval of his message. The group’s letter, signed by the President of the USCCB, Archbishop Timothy Broligo, asked for the Pope’s continued prayers for a more humane immigration system in the U.S.
The USCCB has expressed varying levels of support for the new policies of the Trump administration, recently commending his executive orders around “school choice” and abortion.
However, there seem to be growing ideological discrepancies between Trump and the Pope, demonstrated by new appointees from the two. While the President recently nominated a conservative, outspoken critic of the Pope, Brian Burch, as the ambassador to the Vatican, Pope Francis has appointed the progressive Cardinal Robert McElroy as the next archbishop of Washington D.C., who has openly denounced Trump’s immigration policies and been an advocate for immigrants and LGBTQ individuals.
These recent nominations and the Pope’s latest letter are far from isolated incidents of discord between the Pope and the Trump administration. In 2016, Pope Francis similarly condemned Trump’s border policies, notably suggesting that Trump was “not a Christian.” Despite this earlier contention, Trump’s support amongst the fairly divided Catholic voting bloc has grown, with polling data indicating that the President received 54% of the Catholic vote in the 2024 election, while former Vice President Harris received 44%. This represents a much greater margin of victory than the relatively even split of the group between Trump and Biden in 2020.
Underlying this growing support amongst Catholics for Trump is a broader trend in the U.S. of increased favorability of restrictive immigration policies. A June 2024 poll found that a majority of Americans want to see decreased immigration (55%), the highest level recorded since 2001, following the 9/11 attacks (58%). Furthermore, support for mass deportation measures has become relatively mainstream, reaching 47% in the same poll, a ten-point increase since 2018. Thus, in a country that increasingly favors strict border policies, it is unlikely that the Pope’s letter will have any measurable influence on Trump’s immigration policy or his support amongst Catholics, which has only gone up following the previous papal denunciations. While this suggests that any immediate policy impacts will be negligible, the letter is far from insignificant, underlining growing divisions within the Catholic Church around religious leaders participating in polarized U.S. policy issues like immigration.
Among the praises of Pope Francis’s letter and his actions to bring a more progressive perspective into the church, many Catholics are worried about the potential negative ramifications of the Pope playing such an active role in U.S. politics. A recent Pillar article pointed towards the letter’s general ambiguity, lacking critical distinctions between types of immigrants and the relative moral obligations of receiving countries, potentially opening the door for critics to twist his intended message. These seemingly broad statements against Trump’s policies could further call into question the Pope’s intentions, especially considering his silence during former President Biden’s defense of federal funding for abortion, an issue that the Catholic Church has been predominantly opposed to. The Pillar article explains how “the perception of selective papal interest in American politics” could heighten existing populist tensions within the Catholic Church, possibly dividing the Church rather than uniting it.
This highlights the larger difficulty of evaluating the Pope’s role in policy issues, but more importantly, understanding how churches nationwide can convey their teachings “in a way which does not appear to be either a partisan endorsement or functionally silent on concrete political issues,” as the article aptly concludes.
While past political developments suggest that Pope Francis’s recent letter will have a nominal impact on the Trump administration’s border policy measures, American Catholics' mixed reactions indicate a lack of consensus on how to approach polarizing issues in an era when not even the Church is immune to the partisan pressures plaguing the rest of the nation. Amid the Pope’s recent hospitalization and declining health, the Vatican seems to be quietly preparing for a potential succession—a process that would undoubtedly be just as politicized.