Yesterday, Pope Francis wrote a letter to the bishops of the United States about immigration and mass deportation. While the letter was addressed to the bishops, it was written in response to the Trump administration’s program of mass deportation. It also directly addressed the proper interpretation of the ordo amoris, a theological concept that Vice President JD Vance introduced into the conversation around immigration last month.
Even though it is written to the bishops and is responding to the president and vice president, this letter poses an implicit question to the whole church in the United States: Will we subject our political debates on immigration to the scrutiny of the Gospel or not?
In the background of this question are, on the one hand, the clear teaching of the church and the consistent witness of the U.S. bishops to the human dignity of our migrant brothers and sisters, and on the other hand, the fact that 56 percent of Catholic voters, and 60 percent of white Catholic voters, voted for President Donald J. Trump in 2024, with many doing so because of his position and rhetoric on immigration.
In the National Catholic Reporter’s pre-election poll of swing state Catholics, about three quarters of Trump supporters cited his position on immigration as favorable. Immigration was also the second most important issue overall for swing state Catholic voters, with only the economy outpacing it. Many Catholics, and quite possibly the majority of Catholics, voted not only in toleration but in eager support of a view of immigration and immigrants that is starkly different than the one taught by the church.
Two clarifications are in order here, to avoid some of the most common dead ends Catholic arguments over immigration run into. First, as the Holy Father notes in his letter, Catholic teaching both allows and calls for “development of a policy that regulates orderly and legal migration.” No one, except those who are misrepresenting the church’s advocacy and care for migrants, claims that Catholics are in favor of illegal immigration or open borders.
Second, what the Catechism describes as the ability of political authorities to “make exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions” does not mean that all regulations and limitations on immigration are just. In the same sentence, such regulation is qualified as “for the sake of the common good,” and earlier in same section, the Catechism teaches that “more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin” and to protect a guest as a matter of natural right (No. 2241).
In the U.S. bishops’ conference helpful overview of Catholic social teaching on migration, they explain that the right of people to migrate, including for economic reasons, and the right of countries to control their borders must be harmonized in mercy and justice. Therefore, they say, “A nation may not simply decide that it wants to provide for its own people and no others.” This means that it cannot be enough for someone who wants to seriously engage Catholic teaching to say they support legal immigration without also evaluating the justice of the highly restrictive legal conditions the U.S. currently imposes on immigration, especially of low-skilled workers coming across the southern border. (A 2017 article in America sketched an outline of what a more just legal scheme for immigration might look like from a Catholic perspective.)
Those clarifications, however, only highlight how far many American Catholics are from embracing the church’s teaching and applying it in prudence to the complicated question of immigration policy. But Pope Francis’ letter aims not only at the policy questions about migration, but also, more importantly, at the dispositions Catholics have on this topic.
Addressing not only the bishops but all the faithful and all people of good will, the pope asks us “not to give in to narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters.” He speaks particularly strongly against “tacitly or explicitly identif[ying] the illegal status of some migrants with criminality.”
The narrative of criminality has been a core part of Mr. Trump’s political rhetoric since he began his presidential campaign in 2015, describing immigrants from Mexico as bringing drugs and crimes and being rapists. The church’s concern about this is not new. In 2016, bishops were expressing concern about Mr. Trump’s villainization of immigrants, and the editors of America were warning about the dangers of nativist prejudice and hatred.
What is surprising and new is the theological gloss Mr. Vance has tried to apply to such rhetoric and the pope’s decision to respond both quickly and directly. “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups,” the pope said. That part of his letter seems to be a clear rejection of Mr. Vance’s original argument, in a Fox News interview, “that you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world.” Instead, Pope Francis says, the true ordo amoris must be informed by meditation on the parable of the Good Samaritan and build “a fraternity open to all, without exception.”
Certainly Mr. Vance’s take on the ordo amoris needs correction and theological context, but I will admit that I am more than a little surprised by the pope’s choice to intervene in near real-time. On reflection, I do not think he has done so just to address the vice president. Instead, I think his intervention reflects both a concern and a hope for how U.S. Catholics allow the Gospel to purify us and call us to conversion about our response to immigrants.
The parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10:29-36) begins in response to a scholar of the law who “wished to justify himself” and asked Jesus “Who is my neighbor?” It concludes with Jesus asking who “was neighbor to the robbers’ victim?”
That move from “Who is my neighbor?” to “Who is neighbor to the victim?” is profound. It is the move from self-justification to generosity, from charity as a duty imposed on us to charity as a participation in God’s own self-giving love.
It may be the case that some Catholics, or maybe even most Catholics, judge according to their own political prudence that the United States needs an immigration policy that is more restrictive than the bishops or Pope Francis would like. It may be the case (analogously to how one might decide in prudence to vote for a pro-choice candidate while opposing abortion) that a Catholic who fully embraces the church’s positions on immigration and advocates for justice for immigrants decides that support for Mr. Trump is justified on other grounds.
But it ought to be clear that Catholics cannot support a rhetoric that demonizes immigrants as dangerously criminal simply because they have crossed the border in search of a better life for themselves and their families. It ought to be clear that Catholics cannot celebrate aggressive deportation enforcement as a spectacle. It ought to be clear that Catholics cannot accept a theory of love that pats itself on the back for putting some of the poorest among us farthest from our concern and charity.
Right now, many American Catholics do support, and even cheer on, attitudes toward immigrants that show little sign of having been transformed or challenged by the Gospel. Rather than continuing to try to justify ourselves, we need to hear Jesus asking us “Who was neighbor to the immigrant on the border? To the immigrant in your cities? To the immigrant in detention or being deported?”
The Gospel does not offer a charter for how to legislate about immigration. It does offer a standard for how far we are to go to love our neighbor, and a refusal to accept the limits we might be comfortable with on who our neighbors are. The question we need to answer is whether we judge our politics according to the Gospel or the other way around.
