Two Roman Catholic bishops with ties to President Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission voiced criticism this week of the administration’s treatment of Catholics detained by immigration officials.
Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades, who heads the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend in Indiana, and Bishop Robert Barron of the Winona-Rochester Diocese in Minnesota, specifically cited immigrant detainees’ lack of access to religious sacraments like communion, which are central to the Catholic faith.
“It is important that our Catholic detainees are able to receive pastoral care and have access to the sacraments,” Bishop Rhoades said in a statement. “Their religious liberty, part of their human dignity, needs to be respected.”
In a post on social media, Bishop Barron, a writer and commentator with an audience far beyond his diocese, said he had raised concerns about detainees’ access to sacraments with senior officials at the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security. The officials “have assured me that these matters are under careful review,” he said.
The comments come in the wake of a class-action lawsuit filed last week claiming that detainees in an immigration detention facility in Broadview, Ill., had been subject to “mass constitutional violations” including the denial of basic religious accommodations.
A delegation of clergy members, including an auxiliary bishop and several religious sisters, have attempted several times in recent weeks to bring the eucharist to Catholics held in the detention center. They were denied access most recently on Saturday, the Feast of All Saints, a Christian holy day.
Pope Leo XIV called this week for “deep reflection” on the treatment of migrants in detention in the United States and said he would like to ask the authorities to “allow pastoral workers to attend to the needs of those people,” including spiritual needs.
“Jesus says very clearly that at the end of the world, we’re going to be asked, you know, ‘How did you receive the foreigner? Did you receive him and welcome him or not?’” the pope said, answering questions from reporters outside the papal retreat at Castel Gandolfo in Italy.
Leo urged U.S. bishops in October to strongly support immigrants, as Mr. Trump intensified his deportation campaign in cities including Chicago, the pope’s hometown.
Catholic bishops across the United States have raised increasingly pointed objections to the Trump administration’s approach to immigration enforcement for months, citing principles of mercy and the dignity of every person. In a shift after years in which many in the American church hierarchy used most of their political capital to oppose abortion, the humane treatment of immigrants is quickly becoming a top public priority for the church in the United States.
That shift puts the church hierarchy at odds with high-ranking Catholics in the Trump administration, including Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert who has strongly defended the administration’s approach.
It is notable that prelates who are considered more conservative, and who have direct ties to the Trump administration, are now voicing their concerns. Bishop Rhoades was a key figure in the push several years ago to deny communion to Catholic politicians who supported abortion rights, including Joseph R. Biden Jr., who was president at the time.
Bishop Barron is a member of the Trump administration’s Religious Liberty Commission, and Bishop Rhoades is on its advisory board. An upcoming hearing on religious liberty issues in the military has been postponed because the group’s funding has lapsed in the government shutdown.
Bishops will discuss the issue of detainee access to the sacraments next week at a meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Bishop Rhoades said in his statement. Bishops will elect a new president and vice president at the same meeting. Bishops Rhoades and Barron are among the 10 candidates on the slate.
Bishop Barron did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. Bishop Rhoades’s criticism of the Trump administration was first reported by Religion News Service.
The bishops’ comments come as Catholic leaders have publicly criticized the Pentagon over two separate policy changes in recent months.
In September, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that he would not revoke the nation’s highest decoration for valor in combat, the Medal of Honor, awarded to 20 Army soldiers who had received it for their participation in the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre.
Bishop Scott E. Bullock, who leads the Diocese of Rapid City in western South Dakota — which includes the Pine Ridge Reservation, where the massacre took place — issued a letter in response that said, “To recognize these acts as honorable is to distort history itself.”
According to the diocese, 27 percent of the Catholics it ministers to are Native Americans.
The second policy change was a decision made by the Army that canceled contracts for lay people who assist the Catholic priests who serve as uniformed chaplains in the service. Those jobs provided religious education and training to military service members and their families through chapels on Army bases, and musicians who performed liturgical music for Mass.
The Army’s unwillingness to restore those services led to a public rebuke in October by Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, who leads the Archdiocese of the Military Services, which oversees all of the Catholic chaplains in the armed forces.
The archbishop said that meetings with Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll and the Army’s chief chaplain had failed to resolve the issue and that Army officials had claimed that non-Catholic soldiers could take over the task of religious education.
In a statement on Wednesday, the Army said that the decision to cancel the religious support contracts “will be re-examined.”
Ruth Graham is a national reporter, based in Dallas, covering religion, faith and values for The Times.
John Ismay is a reporter covering the Pentagon for The Times. He served as an explosive ordnance disposal officer in the U.S. Navy.
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