Pope or Politician? Looking at West Virginia.

Poor Wheeling-Charleston, a diocese that covers the entire state of West Virginia! What has Pope Leo done to you, conservative state that cooperates with ICE? He's named a bishop committed to the illegal invasion as your spiritual father. In fact, the bishop is himself an illegal invader who's never apologized for or repented of his own criminal entry into the country. Let's face it, most of those who enter illegally claim a right to be here and a right to help themselves to the wallets of citizens. Hospitals closing and schools overwhelmed? Citizens victimized by criminals? No problemo for the leftist thugs.

What is the attitude of West Virginians to illegal immigration? Earlier this year ICE engaged in a massive sting targeting violent criminal illegals around the state. They deployed teams to Martinsburg, Moorefield, Morgantown, Beckley, Huntington and Charleston and arrested 650 illegals with "convictions for child sex abuse, drug possession and endangering the welfare of children." [Source] Governor Patrick Morrisey praised the work of ICE saying:

“I want to thank the men and women of ICE for their outstanding partnership with various state entities, including the State Police, and their tireless work here in West Virginia,” said Gov. Patrick Morrisey. “Through our collaboration under the 287(g) program, they have removed dangerous illegal immigrants from our communities and made our state safer for families and law-abiding citizens. After years of Biden's reckless border policies putting the public at risk, it is encouraging to work with President Trump and ICE to secure our homeland and deliver real results for West Virginians.”

Let's be honest. Pope Leo is a politician pope. Maybe they all are, but he has taken papal politics to a new level. He has Trump Derangement Syndrome big time. He won't serve on a peace panel for the U.S. He refused an invitation to come help celebrate his country's 250th anniversary. He supports Peru's soccer team over the U.S. With Trump at the helm, Leo's default position seems to be "I hate my country of birth until he's replaced."

Pope Leo's assignment of D.C. auxiliary bishop, Evelio Menjivar-Ayala, gives the bird to Trump, but also to the Catholics of West Virginia.

Chris Jackson, at Hiraeth in Exile pegs it:   

Now look at Menjivar.

Menjivar was born in El Salvador, tried to enter the United States illegally several times, and finally entered in 1990 after being smuggled across the border in the trunk of a car. He later became a priest, then a bishop, and now Leo has appointed him to lead Wheeling-Charleston, the diocese covering West Virginia.

A bishop with that background should be the first man to say: I broke the law. I was wrong to do so. Others should not follow my example. Nations have a right to secure their borders. Catholics should obey just laws. The Church may advocate humane treatment, but she may not sentimentalize lawbreaking. [Photo caption: Washington Auxiliary Bishop Evelio Menjivar, at center, helps lead a procession in Washington on Sept. 28, 2025, to mark the 111th World Day of Migrants and Refugees. The procession began at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart and concluded at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle, where Cardinal Robert W. McElroy celebrated a Mass marking that day. (OSV News photo/Catholic Standard, Mihoko Owada)]

Instead, Menjivar has become a critic of Trump’s immigration enforcement. He has used the language of “fundamental human rights and dignity” against the administration’s policies and has suggested that those who remain silent are “complicit with evil.”

Complicit with evil?

Doesn't that describe the bishop's actions? As for the good people of West Virginia, "complicit with evil?" I don't think so. That accusation will land hard on some of my husband's Wheeling family who support Trump's immigration policies. They are faithful, Mass attending, rosary praying Catholics and believing Christians. I can only imagine what they are thinking right now. I'll be asking them as they await Menjivar's installation. Larry's brother says, "It's too early to tell," but I don't think he's aware of Menjivar's checkered history and his inflammatory rhetoric.

And then there's the governor, a practicing Catholic. Can you imagine what the new bishop will have to say about Patrick Morrisey's support for ICE? Will the bishop publicly excoriate the governor and the conservative politicians in the state house defending the integrity of West Virginia and its right to protect its own borders? Sending a blue bishop to a red state invites confrontation and controversy. But I'm guessing that's the point.

Jackson goes on:

What about the evil of encouraging an entire generation to believe that national borders are suggestions, immigration law is morally suspect unless it produces progressive outcomes, and that the state has no serious duty to protect its own citizens?

The scandal is not only that Menjivar once entered illegally. The scandal is that his story is now being wielded as a weapon against the very idea of enforcing the law he broke.

The progressive Catholic Church has become a shill for left wing Democrats. Most of the U.S. bishops miss the billions of dollars poured into church coffers supporting the invasion and helping transport illegals to small town America after dark. Reminds me of Judas leaving the Last Supper. "And it was dark." Yup, the Catholic NGOs often did it in the middle of the night and created devastation in many small communities. Thank you, bishops! Do you really love money that much that you betray the flock? Or are only the illegals your flock? As for Bishop Menjivar, he used Holy Week to compare the passion of Christ to those caught up in Trump's immigration enforcement policies:

The Church remembers Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus in a spiritual and sacramental way during Holy Week and the Easter Triduum, but some people actually experience the Passion in a tangible and personal way in their very lives. Among them are members of the immigrant and refugee communities today. [Note the euphemisms to avoid the truth. They are illegal aliens breaking our laws.]

Each day this situation is getting worse and more ominous. For weeks now, the federal government has pursued a “shock and awe” campaign of aggressive threats and highly visible operations of questionable legality that go far beyond mere immigration “enforcement.” [Source]

Really, a country protecting its border and its citizens is evil? The invaders are being scourged and crucified? I find that talking point despicable, but not surprising. 

Chris Jackson has more:

That is what Leo is elevating. Not merely a man with a complicated past. A symbol. A message. A living rebuke to Trump’s America, sent directly into West Virginia by the first American-born pope.

West Virginia is not Los Angeles. It is not San Francisco. It is not Washington, D.C. It is Appalachia, coal country, a place where Catholics are a small minority and where ordinary people have lived for decades under the contempt of credentialed America.

So what does Leo send them?

A bishop whose biography will be endlessly framed as a rebuke to the immigration politics of the state’s own voters.

Democratic Party operative, Chris Hale, saw this immediately. He wrote that Leo sent “a Salvadoran migrant to Appalachia” and that the American hierarchy is being repopulated “by the kind of people the administration would prefer not to exist.” That is the left celebrating the strategy out loud.

Yes, the left is celebrating this latest propaganda victory. Catholics, however, must mourn for our poor brothers and sisters in West Virginia. They've had enough suffering. Michael Bransfield who preceded Bishop Mark Brennan was a corrupt drunk, probably homosexual, who sexually harassed seminarians and other male adults over whom he exercised authority. He used Church funds to live in luxury in one of the poorest states in the country. He put in a climate-controlled wine cellar, hired a personal chef, and had flowers delivered every day. Thankfully, he was disgraced and removed.

And now this! Poor Catholics of the Wheeling diocese.

So how does Jackson sum up?

The Vatican does not need to say, “We are turning the American episcopate into an anti-Trump moral counterweight.”

It can simply appoint the men and let Christopher Hale explain the move.

What makes the whole thing more insulting is that Appalachia does not need a Vatican sermon about the moral superiority of the migrant class. It needs Catholic bishops who will preach penance, condemn pornography, defend marriage, fight drugs, rebuild parishes, protect children, restore reverence, and teach the faith without the dead language of the NGO world.

But in the postconciliar imagination, the American working class exists mostly as a problem. It is too white, too rural, too patriotic, too attached to borders, too suspicious of elite moral theater, too untrained in the vocabulary of “inclusion.” So the Vatican sends a symbol to catechize it.

Thank you, Chris Jackson, for your no-nonsense exposure of another Leo assault on the faithful. I pray that this latest insult from the papal politician in Rome does not drive away the faithful. They have been given the short end of the stick once again, but I pray they will take comfort in God's promise, "That all things work together for good to those who love the Lord and serve according to His purpose." What good will he bring out of this? We'll see. 

Please join me in praying for the people of West Virginia, a red state that deserved better from Il Papa. Sadly, the faithful have come to expect the hobnailed boot from the Vatican. Rome continuously meets our expectations. Pray for Holy Mother Church and for the politician pope sitting in Peter's chair.