The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on Nov. 11 sent a 2025 Plenary Assembly message to Pope Leo XIV explaining that they will continue to support migrants, who they said face a “culture of fear” in cities across the country.
The bishops, who are gathered this week in Baltimore, Maryland, for the assembly, began the letter by stating that they “write to assure you of our prayers and communion with you” and later emphasized that they are striving to share a message of hope to a world that “is in great need of that virtue.”
Referencing Pope Leo’s first apostolic exhortation, Dilexi Te, the bishops stressed the obligation to show charity to God and neighbor. Yet, as shepherds in the United States, we face a growing worldview that is so often at odds with the Gospel mandate to love thy neighbor,” they wrote.
“In cities across the United States, our migrant brothers and sisters, many of whom are fellow Catholics, face a culture of fear, hesitant to leave their homes and even to attend church for fear of being randomly harassed or detained,” they wrote. “Holy Father, please know that the bishops of the United States, united in our concern, will continue to stand with migrants and defend everyone’s right to worship free from intimidation.”
The bishops said that a nation has a right to protect itself, but the rights to worship and due process are also crucial.
“We support secure and orderly borders and law enforcement actions in response to dangerous criminal activity, but we cannot remain silent in this challenging hour while the right to worship and the right to due process are undermined,” they wrote.
The bishops listed individualism, increasing polarization, economic and social impoverishment, political violence, as well as “the inability to engage in civil discourse, the lack of generosity to work with each other, and constant threats to the life and dignity of every human person, especially the poor, the elderly, and the unborn” as other challenges that Christians in the U.S. face. However, the Christian virtues of hope and charity provide encouragement, the bishops continued.
“Where the world sees others as a problem or a burden, we must, and we will continue to show that each person is loved by God and therefore deserves to be respected, whether in the womb, a stranger, or homeless, hungry, in prison, or dying,” they wrote.
Dioceses across the country continue to help people in need, they added, noting that the country “is richly blessed with vibrant parishes, dedicated clergy and religious, and many faithful lay women and men who live in hope and charity.”
Concluding, they requested Pope Leo to bless these faithful and the whole Church in the nation, asking “that we may be ever more faithful disciples of the Lord Jesus and credible witnesses to His kingdom. May the Holy Spirit inspire our assembly and the work that lies before it.”