“A lot has happened in the last few years, and it would be great to be hearing more from them right now,” said Ms. Morales Rocketto, who is Catholic. “I would absolutely love to see them have more focus on asylum and refugees, particularly in light of family separation and detention changes in the Trump administration.”

In the Trump era, Catholics are divided largely on racial lines, posing a challenge to the bishops’ ministry. Many conservative Catholics support Mr. Trump, largely for his anti-abortion policies and attention to religious freedom. But about half of white Catholics approve of him, compared with about a quarter of nonwhite Catholics, according to the Pew Research Center.

Yet unlike culture war issues such as abortion or gay marriage, immigration has long been a unifying issue for the Catholic bishops, said David Gibson, director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham University.

“Almost all the bishops can remember quite recently their own immigrant roots; this is central to the American Catholic identity,” Mr. Gibson said. Still, he added, “They are not necessarily in agreement with their own flock.”

The choice of Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron, 71, of Detroit, as the next vice president was also closely watched because, as was the case with Archbishop Gomez, the vice president customarily becomes the group’s president after a three-year term. The bishops passed over several candidates known as more combative conservatives, including Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Ill., who recently prohibited Illinois lawmakers who support abortion rights from receiving communion.

There is some quiet internal division among the bishops about what their political focus should be. The bishops approved the message that abortion was “our pre-eminent priority” despite resistance that arose on the conference floor. Bishop Robert W. McElroy of San Diego argued that Pope Francis does not elevate abortion above other issues, but Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia received applause for his defense of the language.

“The bishops still have a consensus about the gravity of the evil of abortion, but I personally don’t think that that view in any way contradicts the magisterium of Pope Francis,” Archbishop Vigneron, the new vice president, said in an interview.