A high-ranking Catholic leader and prominent ally to Pope Leo XIV offered a strongly worded condemnation of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrants this week while encouraging more people of faith to speak out against it.
Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, was one of several religious leaders to take part in an online prayer service organized by Faith in Action in response to the Jan. 24 shooting of Minneapolis resident Alex Pretti.
In excerpts of his remarks, Tobin urged Congress to “vote against renewing funding for such a lawless organization,” referring to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
“We mourn for a world, a country that allows 5-year-olds to be legally kidnapped and protesters to be slaughtered,” he said. “How will you say no to violence? Because as the great teacher Martin Luther King said, ‘Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.’”
Elsewhere in the service, Tobin referenced Ignazio Silone’s 1936 novel “Bread and Wine,” which was written while the author was living in exile from his native Italy during dictator Benito Mussolini’s regime.