On Pope Francis, immigrants, and the best and worst of the Catholic Church and the U.S.

When I went to bed Easter night, I planned to write today on immigrants and the legacy of disappearing people in Latin American dictatorships now happening in the U.S.

Then this morning, I and the rest of the world learned that Pope Francis had died.

I’m still writing about immigrants and dictators disappearing people with no due process, just now through the filter of one of the most powerful advocates for immigrants’ rights and dignity.

Pope Francis’s final Easter address (delivered by an Archbishop) advocated for immigrants, calling out those treating migrants with contempt and speaking up for people suffering the effects of war and violence all around the world, not leaving out oft-ignored by global media nations such as Sudan and Myanmar and Yemen. Coming minutes after he received US Vice-President JD Vance, who is part of a virulently anti-immigrant administration, it was a sharp rebuke of the Trump-Vance administration. In his first Papal visit outside of Rome in 2013, Pope Francis visited the Italian island of Lampedusa, which few outside the region had heard of at the time but which thousands of migrants were living on, and he said a Mass on behalf of the hundreds lost at sea.

Pope Francis never stopped speaking and acting on behalf of immigrants. In early February, still in the first weeks of Trump’s second term, Pope Francis wrote an extraordinary letter to U.S. Bishops speaking sharply against the campaign of mass deportations. A snippet: “I have followed closely the major crisis that is taking place in the United States with the initiation of a program of mass deportations. The rightly formed conscience cannot fail to make a critical judgment and express its disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality.”

The attacks on immigrants have grown far, far worse since Pope Francis wrote that letter. People are being snatched off the streets with no due process, and in the worst cases, trafficked to a torture gulag in El Salvador. I use those words very precisely – these cases are not immigrants being deported, as that would require due process and not being put into a foreign prison with no way to prove their innocence or their visa status. The Trump Administration is mass-canceling people with visas from certain countries, then arresting them for violating visas. It’s canceling students’ visa statuses without telling them, and then in the most extreme cases such as that of Rumeysa Ozturk, detaining them in ICE prisons. A Syracuse.com investigation showed that in upstate New York, police are pulling over Hispanic-looking people and ticketing them for vague violations such as veering left, then turning them over to Border Patrol. These are shocking tactics targeting people for their skin color, their advocacy/activism (especially on behalf of Palestine/Gaza) and their country of origin.

Neither the U.S. nor the Catholic Church has ever lived up to its best promises. I am a U.S. citizen, born and raised, and raised Catholic in an extremely Catholic family.

The U.S., while founded on claims of freedom and liberty for all, only included white, land-owning men in “all” for many decades. It has enslaved millions of Blacks, interned Japanese-Americans in concentration camps, and kept women from gaining rights until the 20^th century; to name a few. Nevertheless, it has made strides across the centuries, including more groups in that “freedom and liberty for all,” with ebbs and flows, strides forward and backwards. And before Donald Trump emerged on the political scene, more groups were included and more protections for all were in place than at any point in U.S. history. This second Trump term is the sharpest reversal of that since our century was founded, and the most anti-immigrant administration by far.

The Catholic Church has kept women from enjoying full rights throughout its history, there are many thousands of documented instances of sexual abuse by priests, and it has at times aligned itself with fascist dictators to gain power or wealth for the Church (again, not a comprehensive list). I come from many generations of Catholics on both sides of my family: mostly Irish Catholics, but I also have ancestors who were Swiss Guards to the Pope, my grandfather Clarence Enzler (who died before I was born), wrote Everyone’s Way of the Cross, which is often used as Stations of the Cross at churches during Lent; and my uncle, Fr. John Enzler, led Catholic Charities in D.C. I went to Catholic school kindergarten through college at the University of Notre Dame, and my Catholic bonafides are strong. Pope Francis represented the absolute best of the Catholic Church, advocating for immigrants and the poor and the marginalized and those whose homelands are racked by violence, helping the homeless and those fleeing war. He worked to include people and groups who are often left out by the Church – LGBTQ people, women who have had abortions. He spoke truth to power, he was humble and he espoused Jesuit Catholicism with a commitment to justice and service, to finding God in all things.

Meanwhile, Trump, Vance, and MAGA represent the worst of the U.S. – focused on power and cronyism, exclusionary and money over humanity. Vance and the alt-right Catholics of the Opus Dei et al wing of the Church represent the worst of the Catholic Church – exclusionary, money and power over humanity, women having few rights.

Last night before Pope Francis died, I was thinking of how the Trump administration is disappearing immigrants and even threatening to send U.S. citizens (!!!) to prisons in El Salvador. This is illegal and unconstitutional. The U.S., for all its flaws, is built on a promise of due process.

I double majored in “Government and International Studies” and Spanish at Notre Dame, with a concentration in Journalism, Ethics, and Democracy. My focus area was Latin America, and I studied abroad in Spain (where I now live). I learned a great deal about the tactics and horrific practices of Latin American dictators such as Augosto Pinochet in Chile, Jorge Videla, Orlando Agosti and Emilio Massera in Argentina; Fidel Castro in Cuba and many more; plus of course of Francisco Franco in Spain.

Chile was on my mind last night as I read this Guardian report on Arturo Suárez, a Venezuelan sent from the U.S. to the torturous Cecot prison in El Salvador. His wife, Nathali Sánchez, gave birth to their baby a few months ago in Chile. He had gone to the U.S. in hopes of making enough money to support them. As I read of the U.S. disappearing him to El Salvador – Sánchez only knows he is there because she spotted him in a propaganda photo released – I thought of my studies of Latin American desaparecidos. And in particular, I thought of the many executed and the thousands more imprisoned and/or tortured by Pinochet’s regime in Chile. I visited Chile in 2005, just 15 years after Pinochet was ousted. I went whitewater rafting on a river an hour outside Santiago, and the guides told of how people would be shot by snipers along that river. Chilling.

My first trip to Argentina, where Pope Francis is from, was on that same trip. Thousands of people were killed and disappeared during the military regime in the 1970s, and on each visit to Argentina, I visited the Plaza de Mayo, where “Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo” (The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo) gathered and organized in search of their children who had been disappeared during the military dictatorship. When Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Pope in 2013, some criticized him for not doing more against “La Guerra Sucia,” though reporting indicates he at least was opposed to it and in some cases provided strong resistance. The Pope’s parents fled fascist Italy, and he advocated for immigrants to the end.

As we mourn Pope Francis and as many of us hope the next Pope will follow in his footsteps, let us collectively try to fill his void and act in support of immigrants and the marginalized. This means speaking truth to power and stopping the hideous anti-immigrant turn by the U.S. administration. This can only truly be achieved by impeaching Trump and Vance and by them and all those involved in crimes against humanity facing justice.

Bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia home. Bring all those home who have been sent without due process to prison, in the U.S. or abroad.

Make America Great Again? Make it a country that embraces immigrants, our greatest superpower.