Canadian Bishop wants reconciliation with her neighbor, The United States

 

Amid tensions, Canadian bishop reminds Catholics of US, Canada: 'We are neighbors'

September 15, 2026

by Michael J. O'Loughlin

Elbows Up for Canada protesters gather near The Peace Bridge border crossing in Buffalo, N.Y., April 2, 2025. (AP/Adrian Kraus)

With relations between Canada and the United States fraying due to the U.S. trade war, the president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops says that despite increased tension, he hopes the two nations can reconcile.

"First of all, we are neighbors," Bishop Pierre Goudreault told NCR in a recent interview. "We have a lot in common and, very recently, the relationship was very good. We hope it will continue."

The 63-year-old bishop of Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatière, Quebec, said that Catholics have a special duty to refrain from adding to political polarization and should instead strive to "walk together in a spirit of peace."

Relations between Canada and the United States have deteriorated rapidly since President Donald Trump launched a trade war against Canada in 2025. When talks broke down last fall, even Pope Leo XIV weighed in, offering comments on what he described as "great difficulties" between the two nations. "Two countries that were once considered the closest allies at times have become separated from one another," Leo added.

Bishop Pierre Goudreault of Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatière, Quebec (CNS/Vatican Media)

The U.S. and Canada remain locked in a tariff war, with Trump levying 50% tariffs on many Canadian goods in August, and Canada responding with their own tariffs on Sept. 8. 

As recently as 2024, a majority of Canadians viewed the United States in a positive light, but earlier this summer, a Pew Research Center poll found that just 33% of Canadians hold a favorable view of the U.S., down from a recent high of 63% in 2022.

Americans meanwhile hold a much higher view of Canada, with 74% saying last year they had a favorable view of the country.

The pope suggested last year that perhaps lessons from the church's ongoing efforts at synodality could help heal the relationship. That suggestion was given a hearing earlier this month, when Goudreault joined bishops from the United States and Mexico at a special meeting in the Mexican city of Cuernavaca, hosted by Bishop Ramón Castro Castro, president of the Episcopal Conference of Mexico. Bishop Daniel Flores, vice president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and Bishop Oscar Cantú, chairman of the U.S. bishops' Subcommittee on Hispanic/Latino Affairs, also participated.

Perhaps presciently, the Aug. 30-Sept. 4 meeting was a couple of years in the making, according to Flores, and the bishops discussed a range of issues, including artificial intelligence and evangelization. But much of the meeting was focused on migration, which affects each country in unique ways, Goudreault said.

"For us, the situation of migration is not a problem," he said. "It's persons, and I think we have also to think about their human dignity and how we can welcome them, accompany them."

Catholic bishops in the United States have been critical of Trump's mass deportation efforts, including a recent letter sent to the president from Oklahoma City Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the U.S. bishops' conference, asking the White House to back off plans to deport "large numbers" of Haitian migrants.

"What good is the immense wealth, prosperity, and influence with which we have been blessed as a nation if not used in service of our humanity?" Coakley asked.

Flores, who in addition to his role at the bishops' conference also leads the border Diocese of Brownsville, Texas, said the meeting in Mexico was an opportunity to learn how the church assists migrants across very different political realities.

"You kind of realize that under very different circumstances in the three countries, the spirit of what the church tries to do to help the vulnerable becomes kind of like the common thread, even though our circumstances are vastly different," Flores told NCR. "And that's very helpful because it really is a source of encouragement to the people on the ground."

Speaking to NCR in Rome, Flores said that the meeting in Mexico serves as "an important sign of the Catholicity of the church," offering a reminder "that the church is supposed to be a witness that you can be different ... but there are certain things, a certain faith, that holds us together, and a common desire to serve our people."

A press release about the meeting said that through dialogue, church leaders hope "to help build bridges, to foster dialogue and to promote a culture of encounter." It continued, "It is not a matter of ignoring differences, but of learning to walk together from what unites us: the dignity of every person, the pursuit of the common good and the mission of proclaiming the Gospel."

As for future collaboration, Goudreault said the bishops sought to find ways to build stronger bonds and perhaps even encourage Catholics in their home countries to help heal some of the political rifts that have become more pronounced in recent years. For starters, he said, it's important not to label entire nations with too broad a brush.

"It's very important not to put everyone in the same bag," Goudreault said. "There's some political decisions that have been made — it doesn't mean that it's all the people who are talking that way."

He said Catholics across North America should focus on what they share in common, including "our faith, our human dignity, and we need today to have people who can witness to that."

"It's possible still to work together, to live in solidarity," he added.

NCR Vatican correspondent Justin McLellan contributed to this story.

USCCB head Archbishop Coakley appeals to President Trump concerning Mass deportation of Haitian refugees

 

In direct appeal to Trump, Catholic bishops' president urges end of mass deportations of Haitians

(RNS) — The letter marks a shift toward a more direct and pointed tone in challenging President Donald Trump’s immigration policy.

Community members hold a protest rally as immigrants enter an ICE facility at a Department of Homeland Security field office during a mandatory check in where most received ankle monitors, after thousands of Haitians lost Temporary Protected Status (TPS), in Blue Ash, Ohio on Aug. 9, 2026. (RNS photo/Carol Guzy)

Aleja Hertzler-McCain

September 9, 2026

(RNS) — Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City, the U.S. Catholic bishops’ conference president, sent a letter on Tuesday (Sept. 8), urging President Donald Trump to cease the deportation of “large numbers” of Haitian immigrants. 

Citing the violence in Haiti, Coakley wrote: “As citizens of this great country, we have been entrusted with a tremendous moral responsibility, and this is true most of all for you as our head of state, Mr. President. To this end, I respectfully ask: What good is the immense wealth, prosperity, and influence with which we have been blessed as a nation if not used in service of our humanity?”

The letter’s language marked a notable hardening in tone from the U.S. bishops’ conference, though Coakley also wrote that he was “humbly” appealing for Trump’s assistance. 

Last November, the U.S. bishops’ conference released a special pastoral message calling for an end to “indiscriminate mass deportation,” a sign of how seriously the conference is taking deportation policies that could impact nearly 1 in 5 U.S. Catholics directly or through their family. But that message did not name Trump.

In his letter this week, Coakley wrote that he was inspired by the massacre of 47 people in Haiti’s Kenscoff farming community to write. Some of the people killed had been taking refuge in a church, and some of those killed were children. Coakley called the violence “unconscionable.”

“I very much wish this recent and tragic example of human life being extinguished, virtually with impunity, was an irregularity in Haiti. Unfortunately, it is not,” Coakley wrote. He told Trump that deportations endanger “innocent human life” and “contribute to the country’s already deepening crisis.”

Since the Trump administration revoked temporary protected status for Haitians in late July, an estimated 350,000 Haitians have been vulnerable to detention and deportation.  

Coakley did acknowledge that the administration could move forward with individual deportations “to advance justice and public safety.”

The Oklahoma City archbishop has often been seen as a conservative, particularly because he is ecclesiastical adviser to the Napa Institute, which unites wealthy Catholics around conservative causes. Coakley’s letter to Trump indicated that he has spoken to the president about immigration before, referencing a previous conversation in which Coakley recognized “the importance of regulating immigration and enforcing federal immigration law.” 

Coakley met with Trump in January, the first time that the bishops’ conference president had met with the U.S. president in nearly a decade. Shortly afterward, the administration announced a change to the visa requirement that had forced foreign priests and other religious workers to exit the U.S. for a year between religious visas, which the conference had long sought.

Haitian immigrant Monsanto Maler, center, cries and collapses after receiving an ankle monitor at a Department of Homeland Security field office during a mandatory check in, on Aug. 9, 2026, in Blue Ash, Ohio. (RNS photo/Carol Guzy)

In this Tuesday letter, Coakley wrote, “the Catholic Church is sensitive to the fact that many families, especially mixed-status families, would benefit from ceasing the deportations. The strength of our communities depends, in large part, on the well-being of such families.” He also highlighted Haitian contributions to the economy and health care and invoked religious and patriotic ideals about the right to life. “I know you understand the essential role the United States plays in promoting the inherent value of human life,” he wrote to Trump.

He said that the U.S. bishops would continue to pray for and support immigration reform.

Other faith leaders have also expressed concerns about Haitians facing deportation, including more than 100 Pentecostal leaders who gathered in Washington earlier this week and a separate letter organized by the National Latino Evangelical Coalition and the National Association of Evangelicals urging an extension of Temporary Protected Status for Haitians.

The USCCB and the Trump border czar, Tom Homan, in a war of words

 

Trump ‘border czar’ calls US bishops ‘wrong’ after immigration statement 

written by Kate Scanlon 

A woman bows her head in prayer during a Nov. 13, 2025, prayer vigil and Eucharistic procession for immigrants outside of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office in Philadelphia. The U.S. bishops on Nov. 12 approved a "special pastoral message on immigration," voicing "our concern here for immigrants" at their annual fall plenary assembly in Baltimore. (OSV News photo/Gina Christian)

WASHINGTON (OSV News) — The White House “border czar” Tom Homan called the U.S. Catholic bishops “wrong” Nov. 14, two days after the body of bishops in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops voted overwhelmingly to issue a rare group statement voicing “our concern here for immigrants” at their annual fall plenary assembly in Baltimore.

The statement, which the conference approved Nov. 12, did not name President Donald Trump, but it came as a growing number of bishops have acknowledged that some of the Trump administration’s immigration policies risk presenting the church with both practical challenges in administering pastoral support and charitable endeavors, as well as religious liberty challenges.

‘Indiscriminate mass deportation’

“We oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people. We pray for an end to dehumanizing rhetoric and violence, whether directed at immigrants or at law enforcement,” the bishops’ statement said, adding, “Catholic teaching exhorts nations to recognize the fundamental dignity of all persons, including immigrants. We bishops advocate for a meaningful reform of our nation’s immigration laws and procedures. Human dignity and national security are not in conflict. Both are possible if people of good will work together.”

But in comments to reporters at the White House, Nov. 14, Homan said, “The Catholic Church is wrong.” 

Homan argued that “A secure border saves lives. We’re going to enforce the law and by doing that we save a lot of lives,” and that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement “is sending a message to the whole world.”

‘I’m a lifelong Catholic’

“I’m a lifelong Catholic, but I’m saying it not only as a border czar, but I’m also saying this as a Catholic, I think they need to spend time fixing the Catholic Church,” he said.

Homan has made similar comments in the past. In January, when Pope Francis, who has since passed away, called Trump’s planned mass deportation campaign a “disgrace,” Homan said, “The Pope ought to stick to the Catholic church and fix that. That’s a mess.”

Chieko Noguchi, a spokesperson for the USCCB, said in written comments shared with OSV News, “The bishops of the United States have spoken together and in unity with Pope Leo XIV.”

“The position of the Catholic Church is clear: ‘Human dignity and national security are not in conflict. Both are possible if people of good will work together.’ We invite all Catholics and people of good will to reflect on the Special Pastoral Message,” she said. 

According to “Lumen Gentium,” the Second Vatican Council’s dogmatic constitution on the church, “Bishops, teaching in communion with the Roman Pontiff, are to be respected by all as witnesses to divine and Catholic truth. In matters of faith and morals, the bishops speak in the name of Christ, and the faithful are to accept their teaching and adhere to it with a religious assent.”

At the bishops’ plenary assembly, the message was approved by all but a handful of voting bishops and was met with a standing ovation.

‘Our immigrant brothers and sisters’

Archbishop Paul S. Coakley of Oklahoma City, newly elected president of the USCCB, spoke in favor of the statement from the floor, saying, “I’m strongly in support of it for the good of our immigrant brothers and sisters.” 

He added that the statement sought “balance” in “protecting the rights of immigrants but also securing and calling upon our lawmakers and our administration to offer us a meaningful path of reform for our immigration system.” 

Catholic social teaching on immigration seeks to balance three interrelated principles: the right of persons to migrate in order to sustain themselves and their families; the right of a country to regulate its borders and immigration; and a nation’s duty to conduct that regulation with justice and mercy.

‘Rests on foundational concern’

The church’s teaching, the bishops’ special message noted, “rests on the foundational concern for the human person, as created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:27).” 

The bishops’ condemnation of “indiscriminate mass deportation” also has a reference point in existing magisterial teaching. St. John Paul II’s  1993 encyclical “Veritatis Splendor” (“Splendor of Truth”) and 1995 encyclical “Evangelium Vitae” (“The Gospel of Life”) both quote the Second Vatican Council’s teaching in “Gaudium et Spes,” that names “deportation” among various specific acts “offensive to human dignity” that “are a disgrace, and so long as they infect human civilization they contaminate those who inflict them more than those who suffer injustice, and they are a negation of the honor due to the Creator.”

The papal teaching in “Veritatis Splendor” states that these acts are examples of “intrinsic evil” incapable of being ordered to God or the good of the human person.

Speaking as body of bishops

According to a USCCB news release issued with the text of the statement, the bishops’ special message “marked the first time” in 12 years the bishops’ conference “invoked this particularly urgent way of speaking as a body of bishops.” The last time was in 2013, when the U.S. bishops issued their response to the federal government’s contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, stating, “we bishops stand united in our resolve to resist this heavy burden and protect our religious freedom.”

Across the U.S., Christians account for approximately 80% of all of those at risk of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation effort, with the single largest group of affected Christians being Catholics, according to a joint Catholic-Evangelical report published by the USCCB and World Relief.

The report found one in six Catholics (18%) are either vulnerable to deportation or live with someone who is. 

4 out of 10 Catholics are immigrants

According to a Pew Research Center data analysis from March 2025, more than four out of 10 Catholics in the U.S. are immigrants (29%) or the children of immigrants (14%). But eight out of 10 Hispanic Catholics are either born outside the U.S. (58%) or are the children of an immigrant (22%), while 92% of Asian Catholics are either immigrants (78%) or are the children of an immigrant (14%).

Only 15% of white Catholics share this immigrant experience: just 6% were born outside the U.S., with another 9% born in the U.S. to at least one immigrant parent. 

Pew also noted Hispanic and Asian Catholics — populations closely related to the first generation immigrant experience — constitute the more youthful part of the church: 59% of Hispanic Catholics and 46% of Asian Catholics are under 50. Less than 3 in 10 white Catholics (29%) are under 50.

Pew reported there are 53 million Catholic adults in the U.S.: 54% white, 36% Hispanic, 4% Asian and 2% Black.

USCCB issues a "Special Message" in support of immigrants and condemnation of current U.S. policy, including mass deportation

 

At their annual meeting, Catholic bishops were largely united in their statement about the federal crackdown on illegal immigration.Credit...Stephanie Scarbrough/Associated Press

U.S. Bishops Issue a “Special Message” on Immigration from Plenary Assembly in Baltimore

The bishops issued a Special Message addressing their concern for the evolving situation impacting immigrants in the United States. It marked the first time in twelve years the USCCB invoked this particularly urgent way of speaking as a body of bishops.

BALTIMORE – As the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) gathered for their Fall Plenary Assembly in Baltimore, the bishops issued a Special Message addressing their concern for the evolving situation impacting immigrants in the United States. It marked the first time in twelve years the USCCB invoked this particularly urgent way of speaking as a body of bishops. The last one issued in 2013 was in response to the federal government’s contraceptive mandate.

Under the regulations pertaining to statements and publications of the Conference, a “Special Message” may only be issued at plenary assemblies, and they are statements which the President of the Conference, the Administrative Committee, or the general membership consider to be appropriate in view of the circumstances at the time. To show the consensus of the body, a Special Message must receive two-thirds of the Conference members present and voting at the plenary in order to pass. In a vote of 216 votes in favor, 5 votes against, and 3 abstentions, the bishops overwhelmingly approved the Special Message, with sustained applause of the body following the vote.

The full text of the bishops’ Special Pastoral Message follows:

As pastors, we the bishops of the United States are bound to our people by ties of communion and compassion in Our Lord Jesus Christ. We are disturbed when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement. We are saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants. We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care. We lament that some immigrants in the United States have arbitrarily lost their legal status. We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools. We are grieved when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school and when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones. 

Despite obstacles and prejudices, generations of immigrants have made enormous contributions to the well-being of our nation. We as Catholic bishops love our country and pray for its peace and prosperity. For this very reason, we feel compelled now in this environment to raise our voices in defense of God-given human dignity.

Catholic teaching exhorts nations to recognize the fundamental dignity of all persons, including immigrants. We bishops advocate for a meaningful reform of our nation’s immigration laws and procedures. Human dignity and national security are not in conflict. Both are possible if people of good will work together.

We recognize that nations have a responsibility to regulate their borders and establish a just and orderly immigration system for the sake of the common good. Without such processes, immigrants face the risk of trafficking and other forms of exploitation. Safe and legal pathways serve as an antidote to such risks.

The Church’s teaching rests on the foundational concern for the human person, as created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:27). As pastors, we look to Sacred Scripture and the example of the Lord Himself, where we find the wisdom of God’s compassion. The priority of the Lord, as the Prophets remind us, is for those who are most vulnerable: the widow, the orphan, the poor, and the stranger (Zechariah 7:10). In the Lord Jesus, we see the One who became poor for our sake (2 Corinthians 8:9), we see the Good Samaritan who lifts us from the dust (Luke 10:30–37), and we see the One who is found in the least of these (Matthew 25). The Church’s concern for neighbor and our concern here for immigrants is a response to the Lord’s command to love as He has loved us (John 13:34).

To our immigrant brothers and sisters, we stand with you in your suffering, since, when one member suffers, all suffer (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:26). You are not alone!

We note with gratitude that so many of our clergy, consecrated religious, and lay faithful already accompany and assist immigrants in meeting their basic human needs. We urge all people of good will to continue and expand such efforts. 

We oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people. We pray for an end to dehumanizing rhetoric and violence, whether directed at immigrants or at law enforcement. We pray that the Lord may guide the leaders of our nation, and we are grateful for past and present opportunities to dialogue with public and elected officials. In this dialogue, we will continue to advocate for meaningful immigration reform. 

As disciples of the Lord, we remain men and women of hope, 
and hope does not disappoint! (cf. Romans 5:5)

May the mantle of Our Lady of Guadalupe enfold us all in her maternal and loving care and draw us ever closer to the heart of Christ.