By Johnny Zokovitch
At the Pax Christi International 80th gathering in Florence, Italy last week, Bishop Mark Seitz and the Diocese of El Paso were recognized as the recipients of the 2025 Pax Christi International Peace Award, with Annunciation House, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, and Hope Border Institute receiving special recognition for their work on the US-Mexico border.
Bishop Seitz has been one of a handful of US bishops who have spoken out forcefully and passionately in advocating for migrants and their families, defending them against the cruelty that has been unleashed by policies that the Trump administration has pursued since coming into power back in January 2025.
Among leaders in the US hierarchy, Bishop Seitz has been unusually visible in the effort to defend migrants, setting an example that it seemed too few other bishops were willing to follow.
Until this week.
On Tuesday, November 11, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) issued a “special message” stating:
“We are disturbed when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement. We are saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants. We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care. We lament that some immigrants in the United States have arbitrarily lost their legal status. We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools. We are grieved when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school and when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones…”
This special message, being the first in 12 years from the USCCB, suggests an urgency to address a situation that is devastating immigrant communities throughout the country, many of whom identify as Catholics. The constant fear brought on by the ever-present threat of raids, arrests, detention and deportation have disrupted immigrants’ participation in basic components of ordinary everyday life – including Catholic life, like attending parish schools and joining in Sunday Masses. And the number of bishops who voted to release the message – 216 with only five voting against and three abstaining – points to an overwhelming unity among the bishops to defend the God-given dignity of immigrants.
The bishops, some of them immigrants themselves, addressed the immigrant community directly.
“To our immigrant brothers and sisters, we stand with you in your suffering, since, when one member suffers, all suffer (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:26). You are not alone!”
And they called for a program of action in support of the message, noting “with gratitude that so many of our clergy, consecrated religious, and lay faithful already accompany and assist immigrants in meeting their basic human needs. We urge all people of good will to continue and expand such efforts.”
The action by the bishops’ conference comes just over a month after Pope Leo had met with a handful of US bishops at the Vatican, encouraging them to lift up the cause of immigrants by challenging President Trump’s wholesale attack on a community already vulnerable and marginalized by their status as migrants and refugees.
At the October meeting, Pope Leo was moved by the words of immigrants themselves, communicated in a stack of letters from immigrants describing the fear and anxiety that they deal with every day under the Trump administration’s policies. One letter read, “I believe the pope should speak out openly against the raids and the unfair treatment the community is experiencing.”
And who was among those delivering the letters to Pope Leo? Bishop Mark Seitz.
Now the US bishops, alongside Pope Leo and with Bishop Seitz’s leadership, have clearly and unequivocally stated that the US Catholic Church stands on the side of immigrants.
In announcing him as the recipient of the peace award, Pax Christi International stated, “Bishop Seitz has made it clear that the commitment of the Catholic Church in the United States is to defend and protect immigrants, and to highlight the values and contributions that immigrants bring to our country, beginning with their deep faith.”
“There is a prophetic dimension to this work,” said Bishop Seitz when notified of the award. “Our solidarity must be visible… The way of love cannot be hidden under a bushel basket. It must be embodied, incarnate and public.”
Later he added, “For this reason, the Church is persecuted.”
Johnny Zokovitch is the former executive director of Pax Christi USA. He currently serves on the board of the Pax Christi International Fund for Peace and is in pastoral leadership at St. Cronan Catholic Church in St. Louis.