Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso said that Pope Leo XIV had tears in his eyes as he read migrants’ letters during an October 8 audience.
Bishop Seitz, who chairs the US bishops’ Committee on Migration, said that Pope Leo was “very affirming of the work that we are doing in the United States, especially our work directly with immigrants.”
Offering strong criticism of the Trump administration’s immigration policies, Bishop Seitz said that “the vast majority of those who are being detained today are not criminals by any reasonable definition of that word, but they are being treated worse than we ought to treat criminals, and it is just so sad to see our nation treating our brothers and sisters in this way—sad, and you know, so wrong.”