In an exclusive interview with CNN, Washington Cardinal Robert W. McElroy again strongly criticized the Trump administration’s policy of the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.
“This is simply not only incompatible with Catholic teaching, it’s inhumane and it’s morally repugnant,” Cardinal McElroy said in a July 1 interview with Christopher Lamb, CNN’s Vatican correspondent.
Cardinal McElroy as the new archbishop of Washington was among 54 archbishops from around the world who received a pallium from Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican on June 29 as a sign of their unity with the pope and their responsibility to care for the flock entrusted to them.
Two days later in his interview with CNN, Cardinal McElroy said the federal government’s methods being used to apprehend and deport immigrants have created a climate of fear among the nation’s estimated 10 million undocumented immigrants.
He noted “the scenes that occurred in Los Angeles where you saw mass agents of the government descending on car washers and Costco parking lots to round up whoever they can round up is not a sign of going after those who have criminal convictions.”
Pope Francis in a Feb. 11 letter to U.S. Catholic bishops decried President Trump’s policy of mass deportations as a “major crisis.” That pope said every nation has the right to defend itself and keep people safe “from those who have committed violent or serious crimes while in this country or prior to arrival.”
But Pope Francis in his letter added that “the act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness.”
Shortly before he was installed on March 11 as the new archbishop of Washington, Cardinal McElroy echoed those concerns in an interview with the Catholic Standard and Spanish-language El Pregonero newspapers of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington. Cardinal McElroy said that Pope Francis in his letter to the U.S. bishops “put his finger right on the problem and the conversation that we’re having on immigration in the United States right now.” He noted that the pope in his letter said a country has a right to control its borders, “but he said the core of what’s going on now that is so contrary to the most fundamental Christian beliefs is the effort to label all of these men and women and children who came here without documentation from these terrible conditions, to label them all perpetually as criminals.”
In his interview with the Catholic Standard and El Pregonero, Cardinal McElroy said that when you label immigrants as criminals, “you dehumanize them, you say they’re the other, they’re not like us. And thus it is all right to treat them as lesser, as less human than us. That’s a very dangerous thing. I think he (the pope) was absolutely correct in pointing to that as the problem. And that’s what I think is at the core of the danger we face as a country now. And that’s why we as Christians have to stand up and say, ‘These are our neighbors. These are men and women and children who we know, and they live good lives. They’re not criminals.’”
The majority of those immigrants, the cardinal said, “are men and women and children and families who have often had to flee terrible situations of injustice or economic degradation or danger to their person from gangs… These (are) people who have had to flee here and are living among us in such an exemplary way.”
From 2015 until Pope Francis named him as the new archbishop of Washington on Jan. 6, 2025, Cardinal McElroy led the Diocese of San Diego, which runs the length of California’s border with Mexico. He noted that undocumented immigrants are woven into the fabric of life in San Diego, just as they are in the Washington area.
Cardinal McElroy said the Church must stand with undocumented immigrants as they face the threat of mass deportations being carried out across the country. Washington’s new archbishop said this situation has developed because “for the past more than 20 years, our nation’s immigration laws have been broken. The system is broken. The Congress has been unable to address a whole series of dysfunctionalities in our laws.”
In his CNN interview, Cardinal McElroy emphasized that the government has a right to deport people guilty of serious crimes, and “it’s right to be able to control our borders. However, what’s going on now is something far beyond that. It is a mass, indiscriminate deportation of men and women and children and families which literally rips families apart and is intended to do so.”
Washington’s archbishop told CNN that now undocumented immigrants are “afraid even to go to church,” after the Trump administration removed a policy that prevented immigration agents from making arrests in such places. Cardinal McElroy expressed concern about the mindset behind such immigration policies and enforcement tactics, noting that when earlier waves of Irish, Italian, Poles and other immigrants came to the United States, “the refrain has been the same, ‘these are inferior people,’ and that’s what’s going on now… It’s an outrage.”
Cardinal McElroy noted that Pope Leo XIV has addressed immigration in a universal context that “has clear implications for us.” In a May 16 address to world diplomats, Pope Leo emphasized the need to respect the dignity of every person, including the unborn and the elderly, and citizens and immigrants alike. The new pontiff, a native of Chicago who served for many years as a missionary in Peru, noted, “My own story is that of a citizen, the descendant of immigrants, who in turn chose to emigrate. All of us, in the course of our lives, can find ourselves healthy or sick, employed or unemployed, living in our native land or in a foreign country, yet our dignity always remains unchanged: it is the dignity of a creature willed and loved by God.”
Also in the CNN interview, Cardinal McElroy addressed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed by the House of Representatives on July 3 that would enact provisions of President Trump’s agenda on taxes and immigration. The U.S. Senate had approved the measure on July 1. Twenty U.S. Catholic bishops, including Cardinal McElroy, had earlier signed onto an interfaith effort opposing the measure, calling it a “moral failure.” The bill would increase funding for border security and immigration enforcement and defense spending and would lead to significant reductions in funding for social safety net programs including Medicaid and food aid for the poor.
In his CNN interview, Cardinal McElroy noted that it has been estimated that bill could result in millions of Americans losing access to health care “so that billionaires can receive greater tax cuts.” The cardinal added, “There’s something radically wrong with a society that takes from the poorest to give to the wealthiest. It’s just wrong.”
In his wide-ranging interview with CNN, Cardinal McElroy also noted that the Vatican’s recent Synod had looked at including women in more decision-making roles in the Church. Cardinal McElroy, who has voiced support for women becoming deacons, said he feels that would be consistent with Catholic theology. “It’s a controversial question within the Church, but I think it would be important to move in that direction,” he said.
Washington’s archbishop also expressed concerns about the recent U.S. bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites, and said the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons remains a critically important issue for the world’s countries.
Links to related articles:
USCCB president: Bishops stand with immigrants 'in this challenging hour'
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20 U.S. bishops including Cardinal McElroy join interfaith effort opposing 'Big Beautiful Bill' as 'moral failure'
https://www.cathstan.org/us-wo...
Analysis: 'Big Beautiful Bill' portends 'unprecedented' impact on immigrant families, workers
