‘Voice for immigrants’ elected 1st Latino to lead US Catholic bishops

BALTIMORE — Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles, an immigrant from Mexico, pledged to push for a more welcoming immigration system after winning election Tuesday as the first Latino to head the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

“I’m humbled by your support,” said Gomez, whose predominantly Latino archdiocese of 4 million Catholics is the largest in the country.

The issue of immigration is personal to Gomez, who has relatives and friends on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. He described the situation at the border as a “tragedy” and said he witnessed the “suffering of the people there” during visits to South Texas last year.

“It’s an essential cause,” he said of overhauling immigration policy. “Our encouragement to elected officials is to find a good, solid immigration reform that allows people to move legally.”

Gomez, 67, has been vice president of the bishops’ conference for the past three years. He is considered a practical-minded conservative in terms of church doctrine but has made clear his disappointment over key immigrationcontrol policies adopted by the Trump administration.

He said he was praying for a favorable outcome from the U.S. Supreme Court after it heard arguments Tuesday on whether the administration could end a program that allows some immigrants to work legally in the U.S. while protecting them from deportation. Gomez and other bishops want the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program to be extended.

“Archbishop Gomez is a quiet pastor with a powerful voice for immigrants,” tweeted John Gehring, Catholic program director at a Washington-based clergy network called Faith in Public Life.

Gomez succeeds Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, archbishop of Galveston-Houston, whose three-year presidency was complicated by the church’s clergy sexabuse crisis.

Following the election of Gomez, the bishops chose Detroit Archbishop Allen Vigneron, 71, as the new vice president. By tradition, that puts him in line to become president in three years, although he would be close to the mandatory retirement age of 75 at that point.