Pope Francis has appointed Bishop Edward J. Weisenburger as the new Archbishop of Detroit. He succeeds Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron, who is retiring after holding the position for sixteen years.
Weisenburger has previously worked in Oklahoma and Kansas. Most recently, he was the Bishop of Tucson, Arizona. There, he made headlines in 2018 when he suggested “canonical penalties” for Catholics who were involved in separating immigrant families at the US-Mexico border.
Earlier this year, he co-authored an op-ed urging elected officials to refuse participating “in any deportation efforts that violate these most basic human rights.”
At a press conference Tuesday, Weisenburger said that while nations have a right to change immigration policies, Catholics are called to recognize the suffering and dignity of migrants.
“The system is broken. And it's profoundly broken,” he said. “But the current fix is not simply to build a taller wall, or a firmer wall.”
These remarks come on the same day that Pope Francis published an open letter to U.S. Catholic bishops, urging them to disagree with measures that designate migrants’ “illegal” status as criminal.
“I exhort all the faithful of the Catholic Church, and all men and women of good will, not to give in to narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters,” he wrote.
Weisenburger also condemned the Trump Administration’s recent halting of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
“If we really do dismantle aid, millions will starve and die. And hundreds of millions will be plunged more deeply into abject poverty,” Weisenburger said.
In his new position, the archbishop elect will be responsible for more than 900,000 Catholics within the Archdiocese, which includes more than 200 parishes across 6 counties in Southeast Michigan.
