Charlotte bishop says see dignity, humanity of immigrants, not through ‘politics’
The bishop over Catholic churches in Charlotte and Western North Carolina said Christians must remember the innate dignity of immigrants after a U.S. Border Patrol operation left many living in fear.
Many of Bishop Michael Martin’s Hispanic parishioners have been leaning on the church more since last November, he said.
For five days that month, federal agents in masks and military fatigues arrested people across east Charlotte, the South Boulevard area and Pineville. Agents ran into a grocery store with guns, busted a United States citizen’s truck window and lingered outside an office belonging to an immigrant-friendly nonprofit, among other controversies.
At the time, Martin met with Pope Leo XIV and asked him to pray for Charlotte.
“The church has to be a voice that proclaims the dignity of every human person,” Martin said in a wide-ranging interview with several Charlotte Observer journalists last week. “I say that not glibly, because to proclaim and defend the dignity of every human person is hard.”
Most who push back on that message of respecting people’s dignity are missing a fundamental point, Martin said. When he is met with pushback, he tries to discuss the topic without pouring “more gasoline,” he said.
“I ask this question all the time: Are you seeing the world through the lens of your faith or the lens of your politics?” he said. “Jesus calls us to really engage the culture, not to be engaged by it, to make a difference in the culture, not to be changed by it. I would rather form disciples who bring their Christian faith to their political views, rather than vice versa.”
The U.S. immigration system must also be fixed, he said, and “vilifying” immigration agents is not right or productive.
“The church continues to call upon our legislators to fix what everyone and their sister has been saying for the last 30-plus years, 40 years, is an incredibly broken system,” he said.
Ryan Oehrli covers criminal justice in the Charlotte region for The Charlotte Observer. His work is produced with financial support from the nonprofit The Just Trust. The Observer maintains full editorial control of its journalism.
This story was originally published February 26, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Charlotte bishop says see dignity, humanity of immigrants, not through ‘politics’."