The change in Catholic politics

 Nathan PinkoskI, Washington Post - Catholic leaders speak with one voice on the issue of immigration. In July, Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope, marked his home country’s 250th anniversary by calling on the United States to welcome migrants with “compassion and generosity.” That same month, Cardinal Robert McElroy, archbishop of Washington, described the Trump administration’s immigration policy as “morally repugnant.” In January, Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark called U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement a “lawless organization.”

But when it comes to Catholics in the pews, the picture looks very different. Over time, Catholics have become more conservative and more Republican — with 55 percent voting for Trump in 2024. This rightward shift is visible in attitudes on immigration. Twenty-seven percent of Catholics oppose significantly expanding the border wall with Mexico, while 50 percent support the move (23 percent neither favor nor oppose it).

Lay Catholic support for a border wall is sharply at odds with the official views of the hierarchy. Under the mantra of “building bridges and not walls,” the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) opposed border wall construction in 2017, in 2019 and again in 2023.

In November 2025, the bishops issued a rare special message, the first of its kind since 2013, to denounce mass deportations and “dehumanizing rhetoric.” In 2026, they filed an amicus brief in the birthright citizenship case, Trump v. Barbara, warning that ending birthright citizenship would be “immoral and contrary to the Catholic Church’s fundamental beliefs.” According to the logic of that brief, the three Catholic justices who dissented in the case do not merely have a different understanding of the law; they are at odds with church teaching.

Frustrated by the stances the Catholic bishops have taken, conservative Catholics have blamed the USCCB’s material incentives. Since the 1980s, faith-based associations, including the USCCB, have received federal grants to settle refugees in the United States. As migrant flows have increased in recent years, so have the grants that have gone to the USCCB.

But the Catholic hierarchy’s pro-migrant sentiments aren’t the product of these material incentives (the USCCB loses money on migration). Instead, they’re embedded in the way churchmen think and write about the public role of the Catholic Church. Bishops remain captivated by a postwar vision of migration that political leaders across the ideological spectrum are moving away from.