Rather than passing by a suffering victim like the priest and the Levite did in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, Americans need to take action to support undocumented immigrants suffering under the government’s mass deportation policy, Washington Cardinal Robert W. McElroy said.
“For us as a nation we can pass by no more. We must stop, recognize the evil that is being carried out in our name, and fight every dimension of it,” Cardinal McElroy said at a Mass marking the 112th World Day of Migrants and Refugees on Sept. 27, 2026 at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, D.C.
In his homily, the cardinal then said, “We must seek to convert our political representatives from tolerating this evil or replace them. We must shed our identities as priests and Levites and become like the Good Samaritan who recognized no boundaries in rescuing the victim by the side of the road.”
Before the Mass that was sponsored by the Office of Cultural Diversity and Outreach of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, a multilingual rosary was prayed in English, Spanish, in the Tagalog language of the Philippines, in the Amharic language of Ethiopia, and in Haitian Creole.
The concelebrants of the Mass included 18 priests who serve in various ministries in the Archdiocese of Washington, along with Washington Auxiliary Bishop Juan Esposito, Washington Auxiliary Bishop Robert Boxie III and retired Washington Auxiliary Bishop Roy Campbell Jr.
Welcoming people to the Mass, Msgr. W. Ronald Jameson, the cathedral’s rector, noted that the people there had “gathered in prayer and solidarity” and represented many nations, cultures, languages and traditions.
“In these times of uncertainty and hardship for migrants and refugees worldwide, we stand united with our Holy Father and the Church across the globe to honor their journey and resilience. May our prayers promote justice and uphold the human dignity of all people,” Msgr. Jameson said.
Then in his opening remarks at the Mass, Cardinal McElroy said, “We come here to celebrate our history as a nation of migrants. We come here to pray for and welcome all those who have come to this land, and especially and most deeply we remember and pray for today those who are in the undocumented communities as their time on the cross stretches onward and they know the peril, the fear, the overwhelming sadness that dawns upon them because of the policies of our government.”
“Let today be a time of prayer, a time of outreach, a time of justice, a time of recommitment by us all to carrying out the most fundamental visions of our nation which today are in so many ways ignored,” the cardinal said.
Cardinal McElroy titled his homily, “We Pass On By,” and he tied together the Parable of the Good Samaritan with what has unfolded in the United States under the government’s mass deportation policy since last year.
He noted that Americans have two great legacies regarding “the immigrant and the stranger in our midst.”
The first, he said, was referenced in the first reading at the Mass from the Book of Deuteronomy, where Moses reminded the Israelites to treat the stranger and the alien with dignity and respect, remembering that they had once been strangers and outcasts in a foreign land.
“This mandate suffuses the spirituality of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and the moral traditions of virtually every faith in the United States,” the cardinal said.
Cardinal McElroy then noted the American legacy of “reverence for immigration, which has built us up into the great nation that we love so deeply. It was not people of great wealth who came to our shores, but the poor and the dispossessed, those seeking freedom from oppression and opportunities to build new lives in this new land.”
Then he quoted the words of the poem by Emma Lazarus “emblazoned on the Statue of Liberty:”
“…Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free… Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.”
Reflecting on those words, the cardinal said, “There was a time when these words brought tears to every American. Now they are shunned, riddled with conditions, or ignored altogether because they remind us of what we have become.”
Cardinal McElroy said that in the past 18 months in the United States, the biblical mandate of welcoming the stranger and respect for the American heritage of immigration “have been replaced by suspicion, division, cruelty and violence.”
As he recounted the Parable of the Good Samaritan from the reading from the Gospel of Luke at the Mass, Washington’s archbishop said, “The parable is clear: both the priest and the Levite witnessed the suffering and pain of the robbers’ victim. They recognized what was happening; they heard the call of pain; and they moved carefully to the other side in order to insulate themselves from having to take any action. They simply passed on by.”
Then connecting that with the current reality in this country, Cardinal McElroy said, “For the last year and a half, the people of the United States have witnessed the suffering of the undocumented in our midst, purposely and strategically magnified by our government, and for the most part, we have simply passed on by.”
The cardinal pointed out how in 2025 Americans were told that ICE enforcement efforts would focus on securing the border and deporting those who had committed serious crimes, an approach that was not counter to Catholic teaching.
“But then we witnessed the indiscriminate raids on farmworkers and Home Depot parking lots, nursing homes and schools, and we recognized that this was a war on every undocumented immigrant in our land, including those who had been here for decades and contributed enormously to the economy and the culture of our nation,” the cardinal said, adding, “We saw their suffering and the injustice of it, but we just crossed to the other side of the road and passed on by.”
Cardinal McElroy noted how the government’s immigration policy then began to hit close to home for communities.
“When the expansiveness of the net of deportation began to touch us more intimately, ensnaring mothers and fathers and children and families whom we knew, fellow parishioners and coworkers who exemplify all of the best qualities that our nation is so desperately searching for, we were deeply troubled,” he said, adding, “But in the end, we told ourselves that I cannot save them alone. And emotionally we crossed to the other side of the road and passed on by.”
Pointing out how the immigration policy spurred opposition in the country and had deadly consequences, the cardinal said, “When our government laid siege to the city of Minneapolis with wanton violence and the killing of those who had spoken up in resistance, we were outraged. We could not believe that the mask had become the new symbol of American justice. We said it is unacceptable for our government, in our name, to send poorly trained troops en masse into the streets of our cities to crush the growing opposition to the wholesale war on so many innocent people. But in the end we as a people saw the suffering, crossed to the other side of the road, and passed on by.”
Washington’s archbishop said the government’s immigration policy then targeted more than 0ne million immigrants who came to the United States seeking asylum or had been granted Temporary Protected Status. Those people in the TPS program, he said, “were legally admitted here because of the danger that a return to their homeland would pose for them.”
The cardinal emphasized that “now, our government has decided that these endangered immigrants will be deported from the United States and returned to the danger in their homeland. These refugees never broke any law. They are being deported because of a general desire to exclude immigrants from American society. They are being deported because the bigotry that has often tarnished American immigration history is rampant once again in our nation. We know this, but so often we cross the road to the other side and pass on by.”
Cardinal McElroy then described how Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-year-old boy in Minnesota wearing a bunny hat and a Spider-Man backpack, was detained by ICE officers and then sent to a detention center in Texas with his father. The family members are from Ecuador and their asylum status was pending in the court system.
“He was imprisoned for a month until an outraged federal judge ordered him to be released,” the cardinal said, adding, “In the release documents, the judge included pictures of Liam alongside two verses from the Gospel: the first verse was ‘Let the little children come unto me and do not hinder them, for it is to just such as these that the Kingdom belongs.’ The second verse in the judge’s order was brief: ‘Jesus wept.’”
Washington’s archbishop then said, “Jesus weeps all across our nation for the children who have been arrested, detained, transported to far-off centers with terrible living conditions, and cut off from their families.”
Concluding his homily, the cardinal said that as a nation, “we can pass by no more,” and the people of the United States must work to stop those immigration policies and support the undocumented immigrants, asylum seekers and TPS recipients being impacted.
Abandoning the biblical mandate to welcome the stranger and the Statue of Liberty’s promise to immigrants poses the risk of “losing our soul as a nation,” he said.
“We must constantly see before us the families that are being broken apart, the fear that consumes the undocumented communities, the children who are in pain. We must act now and act together. For Jesus weeps, and he will continue to weep until we go to the side of the road, lift up the victim, embrace him and make his pain our own,” Cardinal McElroy said.
The congregation at St. Matthew’s Cathedral then gave the cardinal sustained applause, with most giving him a standing ovation.
The prayer intentions at the Mass were offered in English, Spanish, Haitian Creole, American Sign Language, Amharic and Tagalog.
The first prayer, in English, was, “For our Church, may we be witnesses of God’s love by welcoming the stranger and providing for the needy, seeing in them Christ Himself.”
The prayer in Amharic included the words, “For those forced from their homes by situations of conflict, persecution, natural disasters and dire poverty. May they receive, by God’s grace, the possibility of a dignified and fulfilling life.”
Later before offering his final blessing at the end of the Mass, Cardinal McElroy thanked those who work for justice. “We ask God to be with us in this work especially of immigration in our midst, that the time on the cross which our undocumented brothers and sisters and children are suffering, may soon come to an end,” he said.
Before the Mass, Washington Auxiliary Bishop Robert Boxie welcomed people participating in the multilingual rosary for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees. He noted how Jesus, Mary and Joseph were once a refugee family that fled to Egypt and found a safe haven there, and how many Americans are immigrants, children of immigrants or descended from immigrants.
“We keep in our hearts and prayers those who live in constant fear of detention and deportation,” he said, thanking people for their prayerful support of “our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters.”
During the praying of the rosary, Nicole Severin of the Haitian Catholic community in the Archdiocese of Washington offered a reflection for those who have lost their legal status and their Temporary Protected Status. On July 27, the U.S. government terminated TPS for nearly 350,000 Haitian immigrants in the United States.
Here are the words of her reflection:
“We remember those who can no longer go to work to provide food for their families; those who have lost their jobs; those who can no longer drive their children to school; those who are unable to work, support their families, or even come to church because of the uncertainty and difficulties they are facing.
“For many in our community, this situation has brought tremendous emotional and financial suffering. Some are struggling to pay their rent and provide the basic necessities for their families. Many are living with fear, anxiety, and discouragement, unable to live with the dignity that belongs to every human being as a beloved child of God.
“Many of these brothers and sisters left behind almost everything they had in Haiti. They cannot simply return to the lives they once knew. They came to this country carrying hope – the hope of building a better future, providing opportunities for their children, and living with dignity and security.
“They are professionals, skilled workers, caregivers, laborers, parents, and neighbors. Many have worked hard and have taken jobs that others born in this country have not always been willing to do. They have contributed to our communities, our churches, our workplaces, and our society.
“Today, we remember them not as statistics or immigration cases, but as our brothers and sisters – as human beings with families, dreams, fears, and hopes.
“Mary, Mother of Perpetual Help, pray for us.”
Concluding her reflection, she said, “Pray especially for our Haitian brothers and sisters and for all immigrants in the United States who have lost their TPS or are facing uncertainty about their legal status.”
TPS protections were first granted to Haitian immigrants in 2010 following a catastrophic earthquake that devastated Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and then the protections were extended several times over the years. Haitian immigrants who have lost their TPS status now face the possibility of having to move back to their country that is plagued by gang violence and political instability The U.S. State Department’s travel advisory for Haiti recommends “do not travel to Haiti due to crime, terrorism, kidnapping, unrest and limited health care.”
At the cathedral, fliers were handed out from the Jesuit Refugee Service USA, urging people to contact their U.S. senators to pass a bill already passed by the House of Representatives that would extend TPS for Haitians until 2029. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has urged the Trump Administration to end the mass deportation of Haitians who have lost their TPS designation.
The TPS designation for an estimated 200,000 Salvadoran immigrants in the United States was scheduled to expire on Sept. 9. An alert on the website of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service says, “An announcement on El Salvador’s TPS will be made at the appropriate time. Until such announcement is made, Salvadoran individuals present in the U.S. under TPS retain protection including work authorization.”
The website for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security noted that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement “arrested nearly 51,000 illegal aliens in August 2026,” the third straight month that the agency had apprehended a record number of immigrants. That website also notes, “Since President Trump returned to office, more than 3 million illegal aliens have left the United States.”
Link to the text of Cardinal McElroy’s homily at the 2026 Mass for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees at St. Matthew’s Cathedral:
Link to the text of Pope Leo XIV’s message for the 2026 World Day of Migrants and Refugees:
https://www.cathstan.org/voices/full-text-of-pope-leos-world-day-of-migrants-and-refugees-message
