NEWNow you can listen to Fox News articles!
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops President Paul Coakley said Sunday that the Trump administration mass deportations sowing fear and uncertainty in immigrant communities across the country.
“As I said, this is fearsome on a fairly large scale. So I think what concerns us all is that people have the right to live in safety and not have to fear random deportations,” Coakley said during an appearance on CBS News' “Face the Nation.”
Coakley, the archbishop of Oklahoma City, called on the administration to “be generous in welcoming immigrants,” while acknowledging: “We certainly have the right and the responsibility to respect the borders of our country.”
“There is not necessarily a conflict between protecting safe and secure borders and treating people with respect and dignity,” Coakley said. “We must always treat people with dignity, God-given dignity. The state does not reward him, and the state cannot take him away.”
Archbishop Paul Coakley called on the Trump administration to “be generous in welcoming immigrants.” (Getty Images)
“This is kind of a fundamental principle of Catholic social teaching regarding immigration and migration: people have the right to remain in their homeland, but they should also be allowed to migrate when conditions in their homeland are unsafe and require moving to a place where they can find peace and security,” he added.
Coakley, while often supporting the church's social conservatives, has been an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown. Coakley is one of many Catholic leaders who have criticized Trump's mass deportation plan. fear of immigration raids reduced mass attendance in some parishes.
After Trump returned to the White House in January, Coakley issued a statement affirming that “the majority of illegal immigrants in Oklahoma are upstanding members of our communities and churches, not violent criminals.”
Last month, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops adopted a “special message” in which they criticized Trump's mass deportation program and the “denigration” of migrants, expressing concern about the fear and anxiety that immigration raids are stoking in communities, as well as the denial of pastoral care for migrants in detention centers.
J.B. PRITZKER CONTACTS CHICAGO-BORN POPE AT VATICAN CITY TO BREAK ICE OPS
Pope Leo XIV called on local bishops to speak out on social justice issues. (Alessandra Tarantino/AP)
“We are concerned when we see a climate of fear and anxiety among our people regarding issues of profiling and immigration control,” the bishops said in a statement. “We are saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the denigration of immigrants. We are concerned about conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care,” the bishops said in a statement, who also opposed the “indiscriminate mass deportation of people.”
Special message was approved Pope Leo XIV and Bishop Ronald Hicks, whom the pontiff recently appointed as the next archbishop of New York, replacing conservative Cardinal Timothy Dolan as leader of the country's second-largest Catholic diocese. Earlier this year, Dolan announced he would retire when he turns 75, as required by Catholic law.
“I think we need to find ways to treat people humanely, treat people with the dignity that they have,” Leo said last month. “If people are in the United States illegally, there are ways to deal with it. There are courts, there is a justice system.”
The pope previously called on local bishops to speak out on social justice issues and suggested that people who support the “inhumane treatment of immigrants in the United States” may not be pro-life.
Archbishop Paul Coakley has been an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown. (Brendan SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images)
Coakley defended the special message on Sunday, saying the bishops were seeking to “calm people down” amid growing concerns about immigration sweeps in cities across the country.
“In communities with denser migrant populations, there is a lot of fear and uncertainty, anxiety due to the level of rhetoric that is often used when dealing with issues related to migration and threats of deportation,” he said.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
Coakley said immigration policy must include respect for human dignity, emphasizing, “I don't think we can ever say that the ends justify the means.”
“For us, it's kind of a fundamental principle that people should be respected and treated with dignity, whether they have papers or not, whether they're here legally or illegally, they don't lose their human dignity,” he said on Sunday.
