Religious leaders denounce mass deportations

Two American cardinals and the Vatican's ambassador to the U.S. denounced the mass deportations in Minnesota under the federal government’s immigration crackdown, but they urged everyone to repair strained relations and work together toward humane solutions.

- By Giovanna DELL’ORTO

CATHOLIC Archbishop Bernard Hebda, from left, and Cardinals Robert McElroy, Christophe Pierre and Joseph Tobin at a Mass in St. Paul, Minn., on Friday.

(GIOVANNA DELL'ORTO Associated Press)

In St. Paul on Friday, Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington addressed growing concerns with immigration enforcement while highlighting the need to be peacemakers on the polarizing issue after a Mass for migrants he celebrated with his fellow prelates and the Twin Cities’ archbishop.

McElroy depicted this winter’s enforcement surge as “almost a siege” that unfolded in “literally the heartland of our country.”

“Catholic teaching supports the nation’s right to control its border and, in these cases, to deport those who've been convicted of serious crimes,” he said. “Seeking to deport millions of men and women and children — families who often lived here for decades, many children who don’t know other countries — is contrary to Catholic faith and, more fundamentally, contrary to basic human dignity.”

McElroy joined Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, N.J.; Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the apostolic nuncio to the United States; Archbishop Bernard Hebda of St. Paul and Minneapolis, and more than two dozen other Catholic bishops for the Mass. A part of their show of solidarity with migrants, the morning service was held in the chapel of the University of St. Thomas, where they were attending a conference.