Broglio defends U.S. bishops against ‘false’ immigration criticisms on Italian TV show

Archbishop Timothy Broglio, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, speaks at the USCCB fall plenary assembly Nov. 14, 2023. / Credit: USCCB video

Vatican City, Jan 31, 2025 / 11:10 am (CNA).

Archbishop Timothy Broglio defended the U.S. bishops’ support of migrants against “false” accusations in an interview this week with an Italian Catholic television station.

Broglio — the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) as well as the archbishop of the Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA — told TV2000 on Jan. 29 that criticisms the bishops have received are “false” and “have strongly affected us because they are not true.”

“We spend more than we receive to help the poor,” Broglio stated in the interview with longtime Italian journalist and TV director Antonio Di Bella on the weekly news program “Di Bella sul 28” on TV2000.

TV2000 is a Catholic television network owned by the Italian Bishops’ Conference.

Broglio said the USCCB has “always insisted on respect for the law but we have to respond to the concrete situation. If there is someone who has come here even illegally and needs assistance we must help them because it is Christ himself who is asking us.”

The archbishop said the U.S. bishops have decided not to go into “the substance of the speeches” against them but to simply tell the truth about what they have done and are doing for immigrants.

Bishops in the U.S. will continue to try to work with Congress to reform the migration law, Broglio continued, adding that they would like to speak not through the media but face-to-face with President Donald Trump or Vice President JD Vance about the issue.

“In this way, I think we can try to understand each other and move forward,” he said. 

“We almost all agree that [migration law] needs to be changed and we need to do some things suitable for the year 2025,” the archbishop said. “We are willing to have a dialogue.”

In a statement issued earlier this month, Broglio criticized Trump’s immigration plans, saying that “some provisions” of the immigration orders are “deeply troubling and will have negative consequences, many of which will harm the most vulnerable among us.”

Catholic bishops across the country have publicly responded to Trump’s recent executive orders on immigration, with many calling for a more comprehensive and humane approach to immigration policy that respects the dignity of migrants and refugees.