Cardinal McElroy calls for solidarity with immigrants lacking legal status

Cardinal Robert McElroy gives his first homily as the shepherd of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception on March 11, 2025. / Credit: Patrick Ruddy/CNA

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 30, 2025 / 18:42 pm (CNA).

Cardinal Robert McElroy delivered a homily on Sunday urging Catholics to “embrace in a sustained, unwavering, prophetic, and compassionate way” migrants to the U.S. at a Mass for the 11th World Day of Migrants and Refugees. 

“For the past 110 years, Mass has been celebrated throughout our country to honor and support immigrants and refugees who have come to our nation as part of that stream of men and women from every land who have built up the United States into a great nation,” McElroy said in his homily at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Northwest D.C. on Sept. 28.  

“But this year is different from the 110 years that have preceded it,” he said, “for this year we are confronting — both as a nation and as a Church — an unprecedented assault upon millions of immigrant men and women and families in our midst.”

McElroy described the Trump administration’s approach to immigration as “a comprehensive campaign to uproot millions of families” that “relies on fear and terror at its core.” The Trump administration’s goal, he said, “is simple and unitary: to rob undocumented immigrants of any real peace in their lives so that in misery they will ‘self-deport.’” 

Addressing the administration’s assertion that all migrants who enter the country illegally should be removed, McElroy argued that the Gospel “proposes a far different measure” that migrants are “our neighbors.” 

Referencing the parable of the good Samaritan, McElroy argued that “the most striking element” of the story was “that the Samaritan was willing to reject the norms of society which said that because of his birth and status he had no obligation to the victim, who was a Jew.” 

“The piercing insight and glory of the Samaritan was that he rejected the narrowness and myopia of the law to understand that the victim he was passing by was truly his neighbor and that both God and the moral law obligated him to treat him as neighbor,” he stated. 

McElroy referenced the Catholic community in Washington, D.C., who he said has witnessed many migrants of faith who “have been swept up and deported in the crackdown which has been unleashed in our nation.”

“We are witnessing a comprehensive governmental assault designed to produce fear and terror among millions of men and women who have through their presence in our nation been nurturing precisely the religious, cultural, communitarian, and familial bonds that are most frayed and most valuable at this moment in our country’s history,” McElroy said.

McElroy noted that Catholic social teaching categorizes border security and the deportation of criminals convicted of “serious crimes” as legitimate national goals.

However, he said, “at times, our government asserts that these goals constitute the essence and scope of its immigration enforcement efforts, and if that were true Catholic teaching would raise no objection.”

Ultimately, the cardinal called on Catholics to “form our stance and action as people of faith,” to “stand in solidarity with the undocumented men and women whose lives are being upended by the government’s campaign of fear and terror.”