Bishop Michael Martin of Charlotte, North Carolina, greets a young Catholic while surveying storm damage at Swannanoa, North Carolina, Friday, on Oct. 4, 2024. / Credit: Diocese of Charlotte
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Feb 6, 2025 / 16:50 pm (CNA).
The Roman Catholic bishops of Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina, have issued a joint statement about immigration policy and enforcement in the United States, describing the issue as “both complicated and emotional.”
In their statement, Bishop Michael T. Martin, OFM Conv, of the Diocese of Charlotte and Bishop Luis Rafael Zarama of the Diocese of Raleigh indicate that while “there is room for disagreement and discussion with respect to immigration policy, we wish to remind our more than 1 million Catholic faithful in North Carolina of the stated positions of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, formed by Catholic social teaching, and encourage personal reflection and formation on these issues.”
“We respect our borders and laws AND support immigration policy reforms and care for those who are already here, many already contributing members of our society for years. We do not see these ends as mutually exclusive,” the bishops state.
“We recognize there are persons residing in the United States without legal documentation and we do not condone violating the law,” the bishops make clear. “We will not counsel anyone to thwart or resist proper law enforcement but will continue to provide education about individuals’ legal rights,” they add.
At the same time, the bishops continue, “as Catholics, we advocate for the recognition that immigrants, as members of God’s human family, are deserving of and must be granted the appropriate dignity as our brothers and sisters in the Lord. Jesus himself was a refugee and taught us to welcome the stranger and to realize that in welcoming the stranger, we are welcoming Christ himself.”
Referencing Catholic social teaching, the Tarheel State bishops call for “lasting solutions to our immigration system” and specify four principles upon which those solutions should be based.
Those principles include recognizing the right of people to migrate “to sustain their lives and the lives of their families … when a person cannot achieve a meaningful life in his or her own land.”
In addition, the bishops affirm that “Catholics should not view the work of the federal government and its immigration control as negative or evil. Those who work to enforce our nation’s immigration laws often do so out of a sense of loyalty to the common good and compassion for poor people seeking a better life. In an ideal world, there would be no need for immigration control. The Church recognizes that this ideal world has not yet been achieved.”
When it comes to enforcement, the bishops hold that “a country must regulate its borders with justice and mercy.”
“Immigration policy that allows people to live here and contribute to society for years but refuses to offer them the opportunity to achieve legal status perpetuates a permanent underclass and does not serve the common good,” the bishops state. “It is the position of the Catholic Church that pastoral, educational, medical, and social services provided by the Church are never conditioned on legal status.”
Finally, the bishops indicate that “humanitarian protections for vulnerable families should be a priority.”
“Catholic teaching maintains that families are the foundation of society, and the success of any civilization hinges on the well-being of its families. For generations, families living in the United States have included combinations of citizens and noncitizens.”
In their conclusion, North Carolina’s bishops “urge the preservation and strengthening of access to asylum, refugee resettlement, protections for unaccompanied children, assistance for victims of human trafficking, temporary forms of relief, and other humanitarian protections already enshrined in our law.”
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El Paso, Texas, Sep 23, 2019 / 01:52 pm (CNA).- Three Catholic Churches in El Paso were this year the targets of arson, FBI officials announced on Sept. 19.
“The unknown perpetrator(s) of these crimes are believed to have used an incendiary device in an attempt to set fire to three Westside Catholic churches,” the FBI said in a statement.
“Each church sustained damage caused from these devices. Thankfully, to date no one has been injured.”
The first incident occurred on May 7 at St. Matthew Catholic Church, and the next incident occurred just one week later on May 13 at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Another arson was attempted on June 15 at St. Jude Catholic Church.
A spokesman for the Diocese of El Paso told the NY Times that each incident took place in the early morning hours.
In each case an attempt was made to throw a device like a Molotov cocktail through a church window. In two cases, the devices did not break the windows, but bounced onto the sidewalk instead. At St. Jude, the device broke the window and burned some pews inside the parish church.
The church arsons came in the months before Saturday Aug. 3, when an armed man killed 22 people and injured at least two dozen others when he opened fire on shoppers at an El Paso Walmart near the El Cielo Vista shopping center.
The shooting is suspected to have been racially motivated. Officials say that hours before the attack, the shooter published a document online detailing his hatred toward immigrants and Hispanics. Police said he appeared to have been targeting Latinos during the attack.
The arson incidents and the shooting do not appear to be related, and the FBI has not commented on a potential motive.
The FBI’s El Paso Field Office, the El Paso Fire Marshal’s Office, the El Paso Police Department, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) are investigating the arson incidents and “seeking the public’s assistance in identifying the person(s) responsible.”
“We are counting on assistance from members of the community to keep our city safe. We are asking everyone to please remain vigilant for suspicious or unusual activity to include events and persons around you,” the FBI stated.
The FBI in El Paso is offering $5,000 for information that leads to the identification, arrest and conviction of the person or people responsible for the arson crimes, for a total of $15,000 if the perpetrator(s) of all three crimes are found.
Washington D.C., Sep 24, 2021 / 10:15 am (CNA).
The House on Friday passed legislation overriding state pro-life laws and removing limits on abortion up to the point of birth in some cases.The chamber… […]
An artist’s rendering of the affordable apartment complex soon to be built by Our Lady Queen of Angels Housing alliance in Los Angeles. / Courtesy of Our Lady Queen of Angels Housing alliance
St. Louis, Mo., Aug 26, 2024 / 06:30 am (CNA).
Los Angeles is one of the most expensive cities in the United States, with an average home price almost touching a million dollars in 2024 — a landscape that crowds out not only the poor, but also young families with children. The high cost of housing is one of the primary reasons why tens of thousands of people live on the streets of LA, and most of those who are housed are “rent burdened,” which means they spend more than 30% of their income just keeping a roof over their heads.
In the face of such challenges, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles recently announced it will provide land for a new housing development dedicated to serving community college students and young people exiting the foster care system.
Amy Anderson, executive director of Our Lady Queen of Angels Housing alliance and a former chief of housing for the City of Los Angeles, told EWTN News that a group of Catholic lay leaders from the business and philanthropic community reached out to the archdiocese with a vision for creating an independent, nonprofit affordable housing development organization.
“Our vision is to really collaborate with the archdiocese and [use] the resources potentially available from the archdiocese to create homes that are affordable to a wide range of populations and incomes,” Anderson told “EWTN News Nightly” anchor Tracy Sabol.
She said they hope to break ground on the project, known as the Willowbrook development, “about a year from now.”
“The archdiocese is a fantastic partner. They are providing the land for our first development, which is already in process, and we’re working really closely with them to identify additional opportunities.”
The proposed building, which will be located steps from Los Angeles Community College, will feature 74 affordable housing units, as well as “on-site supportive services” for young people transitioning out of foster care — a population that often ends up experiencing homelessness.
The land, located at 4665 Willow Brook Ave just a few miles from the Hollywood Sign, currently hosts a Catholic Charities building, which will move its operations to another site to make way for the apartments.
“Through Catholic Charities and our ministries on Skid Row [an LA street where many unhoused people live] and elsewhere, we have been working for many years to provide shelter and services for our homeless brothers and sisters,” Archbishop Jose Gomez said in a statement to LAist.
“With this new initiative we see exciting possibilities to make more affordable housing available, especially for families and young people.”
Making land work for mission
The Catholic Church is often cited as the largest non-governmental owner of land in the entire world, with an estimated 177 million acres owned by Catholic entities.
Maddy Johnson, program manager for the Church Properties Initiative at the University of Notre Dame’s Fitzgerald Institute for Real Estate (FIRE), noted that the Church as a large landowner is not a new phenomenon, but there is a need today to adapt to modern challenges like regulations, zoning, and the importance of caring for the natural environment.
Many Catholic dioceses and religious orders have properties in their possession that aren’t fulfilling their original purpose, including disused natural land and parking lots, as well as shuttered convents and schools. Sometimes, Johnson said, a diocese or religious order doesn’t even realize the full extent of what they own.
“How can the Church make good strategic decisions, strategic and mission-aligned decisions, if it doesn’t know what properties it’s responsible for?” she said.
The Church of St. Agatha and St. James in Philadelphia, with The Chestnut in the foreground, a housing unit developed on property ground-leased from the church. Courtesy of Maddy Johnson/Church Properties Initiative
Since real estate management is not the Church’s core competency, FIRE aims to “provide a space for peer learning” to educate and equip Church leaders to make better use of their properties in service of the Church’s mission.
To this end, they offer an undergraduate minor at Notre Dame that aims to teach students how to help the Church make strategic real estate decisions that align with the Church’s mission. The Institute also organizes a quarterly networking call with diocesan real estate directors, as well as an annual conference to allow Catholic leaders to convene, share best practices, and learn from each other.
Fr. Patrick Reidy, C.S.C., a professor at Notre Dame Law School and faculty co-director of the Church Properties Initiative, conducts a workshop for diocesan leaders on Notre Dame’s campus in summer 2023. Courtesy of David J. Murphy/Church Properties Initiative
In many cases, Catholic entities that have worked with FIRE have been able to repurpose properties in a way that not only provides income for the church, but also fills a need in the community.
Johnson said the Church is called to respond to the modern problems society faces — one of which is a lack of housing options, especially for the poor.
“Throughout its history, there have been so many different iterations of how the Church expresses its mission…through education, healthcare — those are the ones that we’ve gotten really used to,” Johnson said.
“In our day and age, could it be the need for affordable housing?…that’s a charitable human need in the area that’s not being met.”
Unlocking potential in California
Queen of Angels Housing’s first development, which has been in the works for several years, is being made possible now by a newly-passed state law in California that aims to make it easier for churches to repurpose their land into housing.
California’s SB 4, the Affordable Housing on Faith Lands Act, was signed into law in October 2023. It streamlines some of the trickiest parts of the process of turning church-owned land into housing — the parts most people don’t really think about. These can include permitting and zoning restrictions, which restrict the types of buildings that can be built in a given area and can be difficult and time-consuming to overcome. SB 4 even includes a provision allowing for denser housing on church-owned property than the zoning ordinances would normally allow.
Yes in God’s Backyard
The law coming to fruition in California is part of a larger movement informally dubbed “Yes in God’s Backyard,” or YIGBY — a riff on the term “Not in My Backyard” (NIMBY), a phenomenon whereby neighbors take issue with and oppose new developments.
Several Catholic real estate professionals with ties to California expressed excitement about the possibilities that SB 4 has created in the Golden State.
Steve Cameron, a Catholic real estate developer in Orange County, told CNA that he is currently working with the Diocese of Orange, which abuts the LA archdiocese, to inventory properties that could be repurposed for residential use.
He said their focus is on building apartment buildings and townhomes, primarily for rental rather than for sale, in an attempt to address the severe housing shortage and high costs in Southern California.
Unlike some dioceses, the Orange diocese has an electronic GIS (geographic information system) database showing all the properties it owns. Prepared by a civil engineering firm, the database includes details such as parcel numbers, acreage, title information, and demographic reports, which facilitate the planning and development process.
“Strategically, what we’re doing is we’re inventorying all of the property that the diocese and the parishes own, and trying to understand where there might be underutilized property that would make sense to develop some residential use,” Cameron said.
Cameron said he can’t yet share details about the housing projects they’re working on, but said they are looking to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the Queen of Angels housing project as a model for how to take advantage of the new incentives created by SB 4.
“I think it’s great, and it’s exciting that they’re taking the lead and that they are able to find an opportunistic way to repurpose an underutilized property to meet the housing shortage in California,” he said.
“[We] look at them as a role model for what we’re trying to accomplish here in the Diocese of Orange.”
Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago with One Chicago Square in the background, a residential tower constructed on the former cathedral parking lot, which was sold in 2019. Courtesy of Maddy Johnson/Church Properties Initiative
John Meyer, a former president of the California-based Napa Institute who now works in real estate with J2 Development, emphasized the importance of viewing the Church’s vast real estate holdings as an asset rather than a liability.
Meyer said he is currently working with two Catholic entities on the East Coast on ground lease projects, one of which will fund the construction of a new Catholic Student Center at a university. He told CNA he often advises Catholic entities to lease the land they own rather than selling it, allowing the church to maintain ownership of the property while generating income.
Naturally, he noted, any real estate project the Church undertakes ought to align with the Church’s mission of spreading the Gospel, and not merely be a means of making money.
“Any time we look at the Church’s real estate decisions, it’s got to be intertwined with mission and values,” he said.
“We’re not just developing for the sake of developing. What we want to do is we want to create value for the Church, and we also want to create value for the community. So working closely with the municipality to make sure that needs are met, and to be a good neighbor, is important.”
He said Church leaders should strongly consider taking advantage of incentives in various states such as California for projects like affordable housing, which align with the Church’s mission and provide both social and financial benefits.
“Priests and bishops aren’t ordained to do these things, and sometimes they have people in their diocese that have these abilities, and sometimes they don’t,” Meyer said.
“This [new law] in California has created an incentive that we can take advantage of, so we need to take advantage of that incentive…it’s allowing us to unlock potential value in land while at the same time serving a social good that’s part of the mission of the Church.”
So, the Bishops believe in a no borders policy? They have this in common with the Russians and Chinese one supposes. And not in a good way. Actually this is VERY simple. NO ONE is ENTITLED to enter the US if born outside it’s borders. Period. Yes, these folks have families to consider, as do millions of Americans. Families for which we need to provide before we accept the burden of supporting the rest of the world which would like to pour in here.. I would not expect a Bishop who lives a cushy life isolated from realities and concerns to understand that.
Simply allowing outsiders to do what they want in your country is not compassion. It is complete irresponsibility. Sorry Bishops, but I am too much of an American to think that is OK. It is not. And you can quote whatever Catholic Social teaching you want to try and justify the crime and cost that unfettered illegal immigration has allowed to damage our country. It is totally unjustifiable, and completely unacceptable..
So, the Bishops believe in a no borders policy? They have this in common with the Russians and Chinese one supposes. And not in a good way. Actually this is VERY simple. NO ONE is ENTITLED to enter the US if born outside it’s borders. Period. Yes, these folks have families to consider, as do millions of Americans. Families for which we need to provide before we accept the burden of supporting the rest of the world which would like to pour in here.. I would not expect a Bishop who lives a cushy life isolated from realities and concerns to understand that.
Simply allowing outsiders to do what they want in your country is not compassion. It is complete irresponsibility. Sorry Bishops, but I am too much of an American to think that is OK. It is not. And you can quote whatever Catholic Social teaching you want to try and justify the crime and cost that unfettered illegal immigration has allowed to damage our country. It is totally unjustifiable, and completely unacceptable..
Excellent points!
LJ, I’m with you 100%! (And I’m a former Diocesan Director of Catholic Charities)
Jesus was a refugee? I thought that had been debunked.