Jesse Romero, a conservative Catholic podcaster, has some choice words for Pope Leo XIV.

“The Pope should tell us how to get to heaven,” says Romero. “He has no authority over the government; he has to stay in his lane.”

As a Donald Trump supporter, he is angry about criticism made by the American-born Pope and US bishops about his mass deportation policy.

With one in five Americans identifying as Catholic, the Church plays an important role in American life – and politics.

Catholics like Vice President JD Vance, and influential legal activist Leonard Leo, were an important part of Donald Trump’s electoral success. They are at the heart of the cabinet too, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Education Secretary Linda McMahon holding key offices.

But the issue of immigration has become a faultline between Church leadership and the government, as well as amongst parishioners themselves.

When cardinals gathered at the papal conclave in May, Romero had hoped for a “Trump-like Pope,” with a similar outlook to the president.

Instead, Pope Leo XIV has spoken repeatedly about his concerns over how migrants are treated in the US, calling for “deep reflection” on the matter in November. The pontiff evoked the gospel of Matthew, adding that “Jesus says very clearly, at the end of the world, we’re going to be asked, ‘How did you receive the foreigner?”

A week later the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), issued a rare “Special Message” voicing their “concern for the evolving situation impacting immigrants in the United states”.

The bishops said they were “disturbed” at what they called “a climate of fear and anxiety”. They added that they “oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people” and “pray for an end to dehumanizing rhetoric and violence”.

It was a significant intervention, the first time the USCCB had used such a communique in a dozen years. It was backed by the Pope, who called the statement “very important” and urged all Catholics and “people of goodwill, to listen carefully” to it.

Picking a fight with the Pope

“I think the relationship is quite tense,” says David Gibson, director of Fordham University’s Center on Religion and Culture.

Conservatives had hoped that Pope Leo would bring a change from his predecessor Pope Francis’s focus on issues of social justice and migration, according to Gibson.

“Many of them are angry. They want to tell the church to shut up,” and to confine itself to issues such as abortion, Mr Gibson says.

White House border czar, Tom Homan – himself a Catholic – has said that the Church “is wrong”, and that its leaders “need to spend time fixing the Catholic Church”. And in October, the White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt rejected the Chicago born Pope’s suggestion that US treatment of immigrants was “inhuman” and not in line with “pro-life” beliefs.

Gibson argues that the government’s calculation “is that there are enough American Catholics, especially white American Catholics, who support the Republican Party and Donald Trump, that it’s politically beneficial at the end of the day to pick a fight with the Pope. That’s an unprecedented calculus.”

Nearly 60% of white Catholics approve of how Trump is handling immigration, according to a new study by the think tank the Public Religion Research Institute. That figure is around 30% for Hispanics, who are 37% of the US Catholic population.

The growing power and prominence of right-wing Catholics in the political sphere is exemplified by JD Vance, a convert to the religion who says his politics are shaped by his faith. Although he has argued that current policy is not at odds with Church teaching, he has also said that there is a responsibility to remember the humanity of people who are in the country illegally.

But some Catholics say that is not what is currently happening. Jeanne Rattenbury is a parishioner at St Gertrude Catholic Church in Chicago. The city has been a focus of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement.

In November, Ms Rattenbury took part in a 2,000 strong celebration of Mass outside an ICE detention centre in the Broadview neighbourhood of Chicago. The “People’s Mass” was one of a series of actions by the Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership (CSPL). The goal, she says, “was to bring Communion to people inside, to minister to them, which is something that used to be allowed and is not being allowed”.

The CSPL has now filed a federal lawsuit alleging it was blocked from providing religious ministry.

“I am proud to be a Catholic when the Catholic Church, from the Pope to the bishops, are saying immigrants have a right to be treated with respect. They have a right to have their inherent human dignity respected”, Ms Rattenbury says.

Such is the strength of feeling that a church near Boston has used its Christmas nativity scene to make the point that Jesus was a refugee.

St Susanna Parish in Dedham, Massachusetts, replaced baby Jesus with a hand-painted notice saying “ICE was here”.

Some in the community have complained, and the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston ordered that the display be removed, saying it was divisive and contravened rules on sacred objects. So far, the church has not done so.

While many US Catholics maintain conservative positions on issues such as abortion, in line with that of the Church, they are also more likely to see themselves as progressive than white evangelical Christians, who overwhelmingly voted Republican in the last three elections. Around a third of white Catholics on the other hand have consistently voted for the Democratic Party.

And nearly a third of Catholics in the US were born in other countries. “This is a church that was built on immigration,” says David Gibson. “The Catholic brand in the United States is an immigrant church.”

‘Inconsistent with the Gospel’

Bishop Joseph Tyson of Yakima, Washington State, was one of the 216 who supported the USCCB’s Special Message. Just five bishops voted against it and three abstained.

“There’s a fundamental disagreement of how the church sees immigrants in our parishes, from how the current administration views immigrants.

“We see a lot more positives in those immigrants.”

He says he is not arguing for open borders, a point that Pope Leo has also made, but is against “indiscriminate deportation”.

“The deportations we are seeing of our parishioners and of our people in the United States [are] not surgical, [or] targeted to criminals,” the bishop says.

He estimates that around half of the families in his predominantly Hispanic diocese have someone in their household facing some sort of issue with their immigration status. Priests too are often immigrants themselves, putting the Church in an increasingly tenuous position.

Bishop Tyson says that more than a third of clergy he has ordained have at some point been on a temporary visa before gaining a green card, a process that in the current climate can feel precarious.

“I have a seminarian in the Chicago area. He’s on a T-visa, but [ICE] showed up, and he was afraid that he was going to be picked up,” he said.

“Anybody can have their paperwork revoked, [so] we have our men carrying their papers with them at all times.”

Bishop Tyson argues that current US policy goes against Catholic teaching.

“It should weigh heavily on the consciences of Catholics in public life who support indiscriminate deportation. It is inconsistent with the Gospel of Life.”

For Jesse Romero though, it is US bishops and the Pope who are going against Catholic doctrine. He argues the Catechism – which summarises the teachings of the Church – is clear that immigrants should keep to all laws, including those about whether they should be in the country.

“We have a large swath of bishops in the Catholic Church of America that have a more modernist, liberal, progressive view of Scripture and theology.”

Romero says he prays for their conversion. While he accepts the Pope and the bishops as leaders of the faith, “it doesn’t mean that in their private opinions, they’re going to get everything right. They’re men”.

“The only person that is sinless is Jesus. He’s perfect. Everybody else, we’ve got to pray for each other.” (BBC)

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