The Diocese of San Bernardino has told its parishioners that they do not have to attend Mass for fear of federal immigration raids.
Bishop Alberto Rojas, the leader of the Roman Catholic community of about 1.6 million worshipers in Southern California, said in a letter on Tuesday that members who face a “genuine fear of immigration enforcement actions” if they attend Mass on Sundays or holidays are “dispensed from this obligation.”
The lifting of the obligation for Catholics is a rare step usually reserved for extenuating circumstances such as the Covid pandemic.
The diocese in San Bernardino, 60 miles east of Los Angeles, is at least the second to excuse its members from Mass as the Trump administration escalates Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids nationwide.
ICE agents, who are often masked, have detained people in shopping center parking lots and at carwashes, bus stops and other public places. In May, armed men in face coverings detained a Latino man outside a church in the Los Angeles suburb of Downey, in what pastors believed was an immigration raid.
In May, after immigration raids in Nashville, that city’s diocese said in a statement that “no Catholic is obligated to attend Mass on Sunday if doing so puts their safety at risk.”
Federal agents arrested about 2,000 immigrants in the Los Angeles area from June 6 through June 30, according to documents obtained by The New York Times. The raids have instilled fear and anxiety in Californians, leaving some afraid to go to work. Several communities in the state canceled Fourth of July celebrations, citing fears of raids.
Bishop Rojas encouraged members of his diocese who do not attend Mass to “maintain their spiritual communion with Christ and His Church through acts of personal prayer, reading of Sacred Scripture, or participation in devotions such as the Rosary or the Divine Mercy Chaplet.”
If possible, people could participate in televised or online Mass, he said.
Last month, he wrote a letter to members of the diocese in which he expressed worry over the raids and said, without elaborating, that ICE agents had seized several people from a parish property.
“Authorities are now seizing brothers and sisters indiscriminately, without respect for their right to due process and their dignity as children of God,” Bishop Rojas wrote in the letter.
The ICE raids have led to protests and tension in California in recent weeks. President Trump deployed thousands of National Guard troops and Marines to the state in early June as demonstrations swelled, a decision that Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who has often clashed with the president, called “unlawful.”
In San Francisco this week, tensions over immigration enforcement flared when demonstrators clashed with federal agents who appeared to detain a man outside a courthouse.
In Los Angeles, dozens of armed federal agents marched through a park this week in a neighborhood with a large immigrant population. Mayor Karen Bass said at a news conference that the park “looked like a city under siege, under armed occupation.”
Bishop Rojas’s decree will be in effect until further notice, he said. “Please continue to pray for our immigrant brothers and sisters,” the Diocese of San Bernardino said on its Facebook page.
Claire Moses is a Times reporter in London, focused on coverage of breaking and trending news.
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