Conservative Catholic bishop of Charlotte calls order on refugees ‘very disappointing’

Catholic Bishop Peter Jugis of Charlotte, whose strong opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage makes him a frequent ally of Republicans, criticized GOP President Donald Trump's executive order on refugees Monday.

The order means that two refugee families the Catholic Diocese of Charlotte had planned to resettle in North Carolina this week – one from Syria, one from Somalia – will not be permitted to come to the United States.

In a statement, Jugis, who presides over the 46-county diocese, said it was “very disappointing” that the families “have been turned away.”

He cited the biblical call to welcome the stranger and said that, for Catholics, helping families in need “is an act of love and hope.”

Though Jugis and most other U.S. Catholic bishops remain steadfastly conservative on social issues, the Roman Catholic Church in the United States has a long tradition of helping refugees and advocating for immigrants. The U.S. bishops have also recently condemned Trump’s push to build a wall on the Mexican border and increase immigrant detention and deportation.

Syria and Somalia are among the seven Muslim-majority countries Trump targeted in his order. The others are Iraq, Iran, Libya, Sudan and Yemen. The order bans all Syrian refugees from entering the U.S. until further notice. And it severely restricts immigration from the other countries on the list.

Since the 1970s, Catholic Charities/Diocese of Charlotte has resettled about 7,000 refugees of all faiths, including Muslims, through its Refugee Resettlement Office. In the fiscal year ending in June 2016, the number was 421, said diocese spokesman David Hains.

“We have decades of experience in settling thousands of families fleeing persecution in their native country,” Jugis said in his statement. “These people have made a rich contribution to the life and culture of Western North Carolina. I join with my brother bishops in the effort to work vigorously to ensure that refugees are humanely welcomed without sacrificing our security or our core values as Americans.”

One of the few U.S. bishops Pope Francis has had a chance to appoint had an even tougher reaction to Trump’s order.

“This weekend proved to be a dark moment in U.S. history,” said Archbishop Blase Cupich of Chicago. “The world is watching as we abandon our commitments to American values. These actions give aid and comfort to those who would destroy our way of life. They lower our estimation in the eyes of the many peoples who want to know America as a defender of human rights and religious liberty, not a nation that targets religious populations and then shuts its doors on them.”

Charlotte diocese spokesman Hains said he did not have information on the religions of the two families that had been expected in Charlotte this week. “We don’t ask (their religion),” he said. “Whatever faith they are, it doesn’t matter.”

Mayada Idlibi, a Syrian-born Muslim who works with refugees for the Charlotte dioecese, told the Observer on Sunday that the Syrian refugee family had been expected to arrive Monday in Charlotte.

The family of three – a couple and their child – had been scheduled to board a Chicago-bound plane from Amman in Jordan, then take a second flight to Charlotte.

“But they were informed (Saturday) that there was no way to get in the States with this situation,” Idlibi said. “So sad.”

An apartment had already been rented for the family, she added.

“They’d escaped from Syria to Jordan. Then they’d gone through a year-and-a-half-long process – fingerprinting to background checks,” Idlibi said. “Everything was set, everything was ready.”

This story was originally published January 30, 2017 at 7:15 PM with the headline "Conservative Catholic bishop of Charlotte calls order on refugees ‘very disappointing’."