An American archbishop who is famous for taking a stand against incoming Republican vice-president Mike Pence said the Roman Catholic church would be challenged over the next four years to fulfill its priority of helping refugees and migrants resettle in America.

But Joseph Tobin, who will formally be promoted to the position of cardinal on Saturday, told the Associated Press in an interview that he was hopeful that the church “will meet the challenge”.

The remarks by a man who is very much aligned with Pope Francis’s own priorities – from welcoming immigrants to environmentalism – suggests that the church could soon take on a much more active and vocal role in opposition to anti-immigrant and anti-refugee policies adopted by the incoming Republican administration.

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In an interview with 60 Minutes after his election, Donald Trump said he was prepared to deport 2 million to 3 million undocumented migrants who are involved in gangs, drugs or other crimes, whether they have been convicted or not. He also did not rule out deporting millions more once the US has “secured” its border with Mexico and built a wall along its southern border.

Francis’s unexpected decision to elevate Tobin – who was serving as archbishop in Indianapolis but is now being moved to Newark, New Jersey – came one year after the Michigan native challenged a decision by Indiana’s governor, Pence, to block Syrian refugees who were resettling in the state.

Tobin took on the now vice-president-elect – a Catholic who converted to extremely conservative evangelical protestantism in his early 20s – and prevailed. Tobin’s archdiocese settled more than 52 refugees last year. Tobin told the Associated Press that the church had been involved in such work for more than a century but that continuing it over the next four years would be “challenging”.

He added: “The ethical reflection of a nation isn’t reduced to the government ... I have a lot of faith in the American people.”

Trump’s election can be seen as a repudiation of Pope Francis’s agenda and vision for the world, from his call for protection of the environment, to greater acceptance and integration of migrants and refugees. Despite that fact, white Catholic voters supported Trump, even though Francis once said the incoming president’s views about building a wall on the Mexican border were “not Christian”.

At the time, Trump called the pope’s remarks “disgraceful”.

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In his interview with the Associated Press, Tobin seemed to give Pence the benefit of the doubt. “I’d like to believe that the governor himself felt caught, because I think that there was an overarching political interest in this thing, the governors banding together against the administration. And I think Governor Pence, who takes his Christianity seriously, felt conflicted by it.”

While Tobin is seen as a progressive archbishop, immigration is also a concern for traditionalists in the church. Earlier this week, US bishops elected José Gómez of Los Angeles, a conservative Mexican-born archbishop, as vice-president of the US bishops conference.

While the choice reflected Gómez’s popularity and devotion to traditional doctrine, Vatican journalist John Allen said the election of a man who is “passionate about immigrant rights” could also be read as a “powerful statement of priorities” by the American Catholic church.



“The defense of immigrants has emerged in recent years as an increasingly critical priority [for US bishops] – in part because they see it as a critical human rights priority that’s very much in sync with the agenda of Pope Francis, and in part because those immigrants also tend to be members of the bishops’ own flocks, since they’re disproportionately Catholic,” Allen wrote in a recent article on the Crux news site, a Catholic publication.

The bishops released a statement on Monday saying they were “ready to work with a new administration to continue to ensure that refugees are humanely welcomed without sacrificing our security or our core values as Americans. A duty to welcome and protect newcomers, particularly refugees, is an integral part of our mission to help our neighbors in need.”