‘We are a Church that stands for justice, not against the enforcement of law,’ Bishop Michael Burbidge of the Diocese of Arlington said.
(Doug Mainwaring/LifeSiteNews) — The bishop of Arlington, Virginia, which lies just across the Potomac River from the nation’s capital, issued a pastoral statement emphasizing that “Catholic teaching does not support an open border policy,” signaling support for President Donald Trump’s and Catholic Vice President JD Vance’s approach to immigration while distancing his views from some of those expressed recently by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).
The letter issued by Bishop Michael Burbidge of the Diocese of Arlington followed a statement by Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, USCCB president, criticizing Trump’s executive orders seeking to stem the tide of illegal immigration as “deeply troubling,” warning that they “will have negative consequences,” many of which will harm the most vulnerable among us.
A second official statement from Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso, chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Migration, doubled down on the earlier criticism with more scathing language, asserting, “The use of sweeping generalizations … such as describing all undocumented immigrants as ‘criminals’ or ‘invaders … is an affront to God.”
