Never uttering the president’s name, Cardinal Robert McElroy on Sunday labeled the White House crackdown on undocumented immigrants a “war of fear and terror.”
Speaking to an overflow audience of 1,200 at St. Joseph Cathedral in downtown San Diego, McElroy used his strongest language yet to condemn Trump administration moves.
“We can do nothing other than come together and pray and proclaim our belief that the rights of every man and woman and child and family are in violence in our midst,” he told a largely Hispanic audience bused in from parishes. “We must speak up and proclaim that this unfolding misery and suffering and, yes, war of fear and terror cannot be tolerated in our midst.”
He added: “We must speak up and say: ‘Go no farther’ because the safety … humanity of our brothers and sisters, who are being targeted, are too precious in our eyes and in God’s eyes.”
In his last major public event before leaving for his new papal assignment in D.C. on March 1, McElroy echoed other speakers citing the American ethos of being a nation of immigrants.
“God created all of us in dignity,” he said. “We are all children of our God. And when misery and fear and terror are unleashed upon the land, we cannot stand silent.”
McElroy didn’t take part in a 20-minute march from the cathedral — first built in 1875 and rebuilt after a 1937 fire — to the Edward J. Schwartz Federal Building a mile south.
But in a brief interview with Times of San Diego before an hour-long service, he slammed the idea of what he called the “massive and indiscriminate deportation” of immigrants, “many of whom have been in this country for decades.”
In his remarks at the church, accompanied by Spanish-speaking Auxiliary Bishop Ramon Bejarano and Episcopal Bishop Susan Brown Snook, McElroy acknowledged that Catholic teaching allows for the right of nations to secure borders.
“But what we are witnessing is far different than that,” he said. “It is not a targeted effort to secure the border. It has become an indiscriminate campaign to bring fear into the hearts of every undocumented person, man, woman, mother child, family in our society.”
McElroy told Times of San Diego that the “indiscriminate nature” of ICE raids aims to create fear so that people don’t go to church, school “and feel terrorized in their lives — so that they will, as the some say, self-deport.”
San Diego’s spiritual leader since 2015 — who turned 71 four days earlier — minced no words.
“This is the antithesis of being Christian,” he said, noting that immigration programs are being cut back. “They’re losing the funding of Catholic Charities.”
But Vino Pajanor of Chula Vista, an Indian immigrant who now serves as CEO of Catholic Charities in San Diego and Imperial counties, shared concrete efforts to protect immigrants.
He distributed business cards — English on one side, Spanish on the reverse — titled “Know Your Rights / Get informed and be prepared,” with a QR code to the website emergencysafetyplan.org with advice in a variety of languages.
Also listed was the Spanish version: plandeemergencia.org.
“Play the ‘I Know My Rights’ audio if you wish to assert your rights during any interaction with law enforcement or Border Patrol agents,” the site says. “It asserts your constitutional rights and shows you are aware of your legal protections in such situations.”
Bishop Snook — of the same denomination as Mariann Edgar Budde (who in Washington called on Donald Trump to have mercy on the scared) — told Times of San Diego that her local diocese is working to open a migrant shelter in Tijuana: “The vision is to give them long-term training and education and support so they can start a new life probably right there in Tijuana.”
But Hispanics aren’t the only ones expressing fears of ICE.
“We heard that a number of people who came from Vietnam decades ago were afraid to come out on the street and do things like go to our regular food pantries that many of them attend,” she said. “So there’s quite a bit of fear among all communities.”
- Listen: Cardinal Robert McElroy remarks at St. Joseph Cathedral
- Listen: Other speakers at St. Joseph Cathedral prayer service
- Listen: Auxiliary Bishop Ramon Bejarano at cathedral prayer service
Before speaking at the hastily organized event, with help from the immigrant rights group San Diego Organizing Project, Pajanor told how his charity was helping resettle refugees.
Catholic Charities, an arm of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, resettles 125,000 refugees annually (in recent years), including 300 in San Diego — taken in by their “affinity groups,” he said.
“We see Jesus in each one of them,” Pajanor said.
At the standing-room-only cathedral, several speakers offered personal testimony on how recent events have affected them. Two adult sisters, side-by-side, spoke in English and Spanish, telling fears of their families. One was near tears.
At a half-hour rally and prayer vigil overseen by several dozen San Diego police officers — who encountered no counterprotestors — others gave fiery speeches in Spanish.
Before the event, participants were warned on social media not to bring other nations’ flags — a common motif of immigrant rights marches.
But many small U.S. flags were handed out and waved wildly at moments, especially amid remarks of Texas-born Bishop Bejarano.
“We have been there. We have done that,” Bejarano told a crowd that likely topped 500, referring to previous deportations in U.S. history. “America, don’t make the same mistakes of the past.”
A variety of interfaith leaders attended the rally/vigil with Bejarano. Also bearing witness were U.S. Rep. Juan Vargas, Assemblyman David Alvarez and National City Councilman Jose Rodriguez. None of the electeds spoke.
Near the end of the vigil, Bejarano called on parishioners from as far away as Oceanside to raise their hands overhead in prayer — aimed at the empty federal building across the street on Super Bowl Sunday.
Prayer was all they might muster at this point. Plus lawyers for Catholic Charities.
Cardinal McElroy told Times of San Diego: “We’re helping with speaking out; we’re helping with prayer, and I think we’ll have to be advocates — all of us — for the rights of these families and children, men and women.”
In concluding his 5-minute cathedral talk, he said:
“So as we go forth … let us remember that … we ask God’s blessing upon us all but at every moment of the unfolding weeks. We cannot stay silent but speak up for the rights of those who are undocumented and for the wrong of unleashing the campaign of fear, which is unfolding in our midst.”
He added some “viva” exclamations at the end, then apologized in Spanish for his pronunciation.
