In response to the crash in Brownsville, Bishop Flores said, “We must resist the corrosive tendency to devalue the lives of immigrants, the poor, and the vulnerable.”

Archbishop Robert F. Prevost, who took the helm at the Dicastery for Bishops in mid-April, said because a bishop is called to serve an entire diocese, not just the priests, “listening to the people of God is also important.”

While the Diocese of Providence flies relatively under the radar, it gained national attention in recent years in part because of the outspokenness of its outgoing bishop, Thomas Tobin.

A ruling against the DACA program could mean that after years of personal and civic struggle, Dreamers would once again face the possibility of deportation.

“Personally,” the archbishop told his audience, “I would not assist with a suicide, but I understand that legal mediation may be the greatest common good concretely possible under the conditions in which we find ourselves.”

The commission gathered in Rome to reflect on findings from the continental stage of the process leading up to the assemblies of the Synod of Bishops at the Vatican in 2023 and 2024.