Fall River bishop exhorts the U.S. to stop dividing immigrant families

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FALL RIVER — The Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fall River is calling out the U.S. government for its aggressive immigration enforcement operations in recent months. 

Bishop Edgar Moreira da Cunha told The Light in an exclusive interview that the U.S. government’s aggressive tactics are only creating chaos and will backfire.

“The United States is shooting themselves in the foot because they are doing harm to themselves by the things that they are doing,” da Cunha said. “Imagine those children who are born in this country and whose parents have been taken away from them. 

“They’re going to grow up with such hatred and resentment from the trauma that they experienced,” he continued, “and we don’t know what’s going to happen to them and how they’re going to turn out.”

As of September, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security held nearly 60,000 immigrants in detention. Of those, almost 72% have no criminal convictions greater than minor offenses such as traffic violations. The Light has confirmed that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has detained about 60 immigrants in or from the Greater New Bedford area since Jan. 20.

“If they want to deport the criminals, go right ahead,” da Cunha said. “You have all my support. But when they divide families and take parents away from children and leave children abandoned, that’s not who we are.”

The pronouncements are the prelate’s first on the topic since Jan. 31, when he issued a public statement expressing concern for the rescission of a sensitive locations policy that prohibited ICE operations at clinics, courthouses, municipal offices, schools, and religious buildings. In it, he was measured in his tone.

“Churches are sacred places, long regarded as a safe refuge where anyone can go to seek God’s comfort and strength,” the statement read. “It is my hope and prayer that the protection once afforded our churches, and other special places is not ripped away in the current climate.”

Now that he’s spoken out, some New Bedford advocates said they are hoping that he and other Catholic leaders say more.

“I absolutely think they should take a stand,” said Helena DaSilva-Hughes, president of the Immigrants’ Assistance Center. “There’s such a huge role they should be playing on this issue.”

“The people that are getting picked up are their parishioners.”

Pope Leo speaks out

Da Cunha’s words came shortly after Pope Leo XIV, the first-ever U.S.-born leader of the worldwide Catholic Church, issued the first apostolic exhortation of his papacy, Dilexi Te (I Have Loved You), a reflection on the Church and the poor. Leo appears to have placed the Catholic Church more firmly in opposition to the current mass deportation campaign. 

In the exhortation Leo appeared to harken to a 2017 comment by Pope Francis, then interpreted as criticism of the first Trump administration’s plans to build a wall at the southern border.

“The Church, like a mother, accompanies those who are walking,” Leo wrote. “Where the world sees threats, she sees children; where walls are built, she builds bridges.”

According to Thomas Groome, a Catholic theologian and professor of religious education at Boston College, the pope quoted his pontifical predecessor about 150 times in the 80-page document. That, he said, signals an intention to continue in Francis’s footsteps, if in Leo’s own idiom. 

But not every Catholic leader supports that position.

“There are more traditional conservative bishops who have resisted that,” Groome said. “There will be bishops who will drag their butts and won’t be enthusiastic.” 

But, he continued, Pope Leo does have a powerful tool to guide the church so it lines up with his vision. “I think he’ll continue to appoint bishops that are more in keeping with his agenda.”

Leo’s exhortation wasn’t just focused on the United States. He was speaking to a world with more than 123 million displaced persons.

“I think it would be a misreading of the document to say the pope is writing directly to the president of the United States,” said Hosffman Ospino, a Catholic theologian and professor of theology at Boston College. “The U.S. is not the only nation in the world that is confronting realities related to immigration.”

Signaling opposition

Still, the pope has recently spoken specifically about the current atmosphere around immigration enforcement in the U.S.

On Sept. 30, Leo answered a question from the assembled press outside his Castel Gandolfo residence on maintaining philosophical coherence when it comes to the abortion debate.

“Someone who says I am against abortion but I am in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States — I don’t know if that’s pro-life,” he said. 

On Oct. 8, the pope reportedly told an audience of bishops from the U.S. that church leadership nationwide should “firmly address” the treatment of immigrants. 

“He’s keenly aware of our capacity as a government and as a country,” Groome said. “He has an American consciousness and is aware that we could be doing a lot more” to help the poor.

Ospino said that xenophobia and anti-Catholicism have historically gone hand in hand in the U.S., targeting groups from Ireland, Italy, and Portugal and other Catholic countries during previous immigration waves in the 19th and 20th centuries.

“For almost two centuries plus, Catholics in the USA have been forced to develop arguments that being Catholic and a migrant is not anathema to being an American,” Ospino said. “We have had Catholics throughout the centuries making a case for the just treatment of migrants.”

The recent trend has put bishops in the U.S. on notice, according to some observers of the Catholic Church. 

“It’s not really an order but more like a very strong suggestion,” said Brian Fraga, a staff writer at the National Catholic Reporter. “Pope Leo definitely thinks that Church leaders have an obligation to forcefully speak out in defense of migrants.”

“As a sitting Roman Catholic bishop, [da Cunha] would not be seen as exempt from the pope’s call to do that.”

Local impacts

Since da Cunha became bishop of Fall River in 2014 — making him the prelate of more than 250,000 Roman Catholics in Bristol County, part of Plymouth County, and the Cape and islands — he has spoken out in defense of immigrants.

In 2023, when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sent dozens of Venezuelan migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, he told the Catholic news service Our Sunday Visitor that the diocese’s Catholic Charities branch responded with material aid for the migrants.

Da Cunha said Catholic Charities handles much of the diocese’s immigration work. Its immigration department provides legal services to immigrants such as Pascual Cuin González, whom ICE took into custody for a week before releasing him in Louisiana. A lawyer with Catholic Charities represented him in the successful asylum petition that preceded that.  

“We have been very supportive of our people and our churches,” da Cunha said. 

The prelate said church attendance dropped in the first few months of Trump’s deportation operations. That is in line with national trends: some religious organizations have reported drops in attendance as high as 40%. 

Nonetheless, Da Cunha said people have been returning to the pews in recent weeks.

“The fear is still there but it seems to have calmed down a little bit,” he said.

But the impacts have been felt in other ways. 

Da Cunha — himself an immigrant from Bahia, Brazil — had planned to lead a delegation of Brazilian pilgrims to the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. this November. They were to visit the oratory of Nossa Senhora Aparecida, a Marian apparition and patron saint of Brazil, enthroned at the shrine in September 2024 during a Mass attended by more than 6,000 Brazilian pilgrims.

But on Sept. 10, da Cunha canceled the pilgrimage.

“After much reflection, dialogue, and prayer, we have come to the conclusion that, due to the current situation facing immigrants in this country, we are canceling our pilgrimage to Nossa Senhora Aparecida at the National Shrine planned for November 8, 2025,” he wrote in an email in Portuguese to diocesan pilgrims. “Hopeful for the improvement of the situation next year, we hope to then plan a new pilgrimage for the second anniversary of the Enthronement of Nossa Senhora Aparecida.”

According to the bishop and theologians, Catholic doctrine allows that a nation-state has the right to defend its borders. It also holds that every person has a right to migrate “to sustain their lives and the lives of their families” and that nations should treat people with respect and dignity while administering immigration laws.

“Policies that impact those two things need to be fair and just and have consideration for the dignity of every person,” da Cunha said. “We say every country has a right to protect the border. But we are also saying that people who immigrate are human beings.”

“They have rights, they have dignity, and they have to be treated as such.”

Greater Catholic resistance

In recent months, some American leadership in the Catholic Church has taken up the pope’s call, according to Fraga, the National Catholic Reporter journalist.

“U.S. Catholic bishops as a whole have yet to find a collective strong voice on immigration,” he said. “With that said, we have seen a few examples of individual bishops being really outspoken and demonstrating leadership on the issue.”

He singled out Bishop Michael Pham of the Diocese of San Diego, who accompanied immigrants to immigration court hearings in June, and Bishop Joseph Tyson of the Diocese of Yakima in Washington, who used a homily to advocate for a parishioner in ICE custody in September. 

“Those bishops might yet embolden the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to find its prophetic voice on migration and the Trump administration’s enforcement actions,” he said. 

Fraga said the actions of those bishops and the pope have angered conservatives in the Catholic Church in the U.S. 

“It’s hard to say how effective the Catholic Church can be in advocating on this issue, just because of how polarized lay Catholics in the pews are,” he said. “Catholics, for the most part, take their cues from their own personal political beliefs.” 

Da Cunha seemed conscious of that in his interview with The Light. 

“I know this is a difficult situation because not everybody feels comfortable, and when you talk about certain things that feel uncomfortable, there are people who say we talk about politics,” da Cunha said. “For some people, they interpret this as being involved in politics, but defending the rights of the poor and immigrants is the social justice teaching of the Church.

“I intend to continue defending them, but I intend to find a way to do it in a way that does not cause division.”

Da Cunha added that he sees the government’s current attitude toward immigrants as contrary to the U.S.’s foundational philosophy.

“It saddens me that our country, such a beautiful country with such potential and such a history of welcome, that we are not being what we always advocated and defended and promoted,” he said. “The most difficult part for me is when I see families divided and children suffering because of that. That’s not who we are.”

Asked why he has been relatively quiet until now, da Cunha said the answer was simple: No one had asked him to speak.

“I have always spoken when people asked me to,” he said. “I’m not avoiding or hiding, but I’m not out with a megaphone on the street. 

“But I do [speak] when I think it’ll produce something positive.”

Kevin G. Andrade can be contacted at kandrade@newbedfordlight.org.