Updated Nov. 20, 2025, 7:40 a.m.
Bishop Michael Martin of the Catholic Diocese of Charlotte says he personally appealed to Pope Leo XIV on Wednesday to pray for immigrant families in Charlotte, where Border Patrol agents have detained more than 250 people since the weekend.
Martin, who is in Rome this week, spoke with WFAE’s Nick de la Canal shortly after meeting the pontiff. The bishop has also called on local Catholics to join a day of prayer and fasting on Friday in solidarity with immigrants, and he wrote a letter to the diocese, in which he asked parishioners to check up on each other and to not "vilify" federal agents.
Roughly half of the diocese’s 565,000 Catholics are Hispanic. The diocese said Wednesday it was not aware of any immigration enforcement action that had taken place at any of its churches or schools.
Interview highlights
On raising Charlotte's situation with Pope Leo XIV
I was grateful to be able to be there, number one. But secondly, (I was there) to thank him ... for the messaging that he's put out over the last few days, in particular yesterday, that I think meant a lot for our folks in western North Carolina who are experiencing a lot of fear at this time.
I assured him of our prayers and I asked him to continue to pray for these folks who are experiencing this kind of daily anxiety, and to continue to speak strongly about what our faith says to this particular issue.
On what churches are seeing on the ground
You can imagine that for many folks — migrants — who are uncertain, there's a pall of uncertainty that hangs over the community. People are afraid to go outside. They don't know where they may encounter enforcement agents and so as a result they tend to just stay indoors.
On his message to undocumented and mixed-status families
It's to keep their focus on Jesus Christ. For us as Catholics, we look to Jesus all the time, and he dealt, when he walked this earth, with people in similar circumstances who felt that kind of fear and uncertainty, and he promises to be with us in the midst of that uncertainty. And we believe in that very strongly.
... The one message that I want these folks to hear is that God is with them and that we are with them.
On why he urged Catholics not to vilify federal agents
I feel like the more we focus on that issue, the more we miss the real issue. This isn't an enforcement issue. This has been 20-plus years of non or ineffective immigration policy. If all we do right now is talk about the enforcement and don't call upon our legislators to do what they — both parties —have been saying for years, that the country needs real and important, immigration policy reform ... the enforcement issues will be with us for the next 20 years.
On what needs to happen next
It really is incumbent upon our legislators at the federal level. Immigration is a federal issue and as such needs to be addressed by Congress. And I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said by both parties for the last 20 years.
The grinding to a halt that we saw in the government shutdown is just another iteration of the same dynamic that everyone acknowledges needs to be addressed. I'm not saying anything new here. I'm just trying to keep our focus where it needs to be.
On what the diocese is doing right now
We've been inviting all of our pastors to understand how best to respond should enforcement agents be on their campuses.
We have had various communities where there are a larger number of migrants offering different programs to help folks to understand what their rights are, and clearly, there's been a lot of one-on-one engagement by pastors encouraging parishioners to engage with other parishioners.
A pastor's one person, but we have hundreds if not thousands of parishioners that can reach out to their neighbors to say, 'Hey, what can I do for you? How can I be a resource for you?' So that sense of encouragement and empowerment of others who are documented to be able to say, 'What can we do for you in this difficult time?'
On what gives him hope
What does give me hope is the power of Jesus Christ, and his spirit is alive and well in our world, and the more we open ourselves to Him, and the more we see each other — and that, to me, that's the key here.
The more we see each other not as labels, but as human beings who are bound and connected to one another in a really powerful and wonderful way, the more we find points of connection, the better off our community is. So that's what gives me a lot of hope.
