(RNS) — In his first United States episcopal appointment, Pope Leo XIV named Michael Pham bishop of San Diego on Thursday (May 22). Pham fled Vietnam as a refugee in 1980 and has spent over 25 years as a priest in San Diego. He is the first Vietnamese American bishop to lead a U.S. diocese.
Pham left Vietnam at age 13, after his family previously made several attempts to flee violence in the country. When he was about 8 years old, a barge they were trying to depart on crowded them alongside several dead bodies, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported. His family eventually made it to a refugee camp in Malaysia before being sponsored by a U.S. family in 1981, first settling in Blue Earth, Minnesota. In 1985, his family moved to San Diego.
He studied aeronautical engineering at San Diego State University and then studied to become a priest at the University of San Diego and St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, California.
He called San Diego “heaven on earth,” according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.
“It’s such great news for me as a bishop to be able to stay at (my) home diocese and to serve the diocese of San Diego,” Pham said at a news conference after his appointment.
Pham, 58, was made an auxiliary bishop less than two years ago in 2023, when Cardinal Robert Prevost, now-Pope Leo, was leading the Vatican’s Dicastery for Bishops, meaning he would have played a major role in elevating Pham at the time. He served as auxiliary bishop under Cardinal Robert McElroy, then-San Diego bishop, who was tapped to lead the Archdiocese of Washington in early 2025, in one of Pope Francis’ last U.S. episcopal appointments before his death.
The move to elevate McElroy, made just weeks before President Donald Trump assumed office, was widely seen as partially motivated by a desire to instill a strong pro-migrant voice in Washington to speak against Trump’s anti-migrant regime, especially drawing on McElroy’s experience at the U.S. border with Mexico.
Pham’s appointment to lead San Diego’s diocese seems to continue that thread, as Leo’s appointments are expected to demonstrate continuity with the last few years of the Francis papacy. At the news conference following his appointment, Pham said he would continue to implement the visions of McElroy and Francis.
“I’m very grateful. He had mentored me over the years,” said Pham of McElroy.
While U.S. cardinals denied Leo’s election was a response to Trump’s increasingly authoritarian moves, Leo’s appointment of Pham comes months after Trump largely shut down the U.S. refugee resettlement program on which Pham once relied.
Of Leo, whom he met in Rome as an auxiliary bishop, Pham said, “He has this wonderful kindness, (is) compassionate, quiet, reserved but very mindful and very observant of the needs of the people.”
Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez said in a Facebook post that he was “delighted” by Pham’s appointment, writing, “He is a good priest with a heart for the poor and the refugee, and I know he will be a good shepherd for the people of God in San Diego.”
The San Diego Union-Tribune reported local Vietnamese Catholics were thrilled with the appointment. As a pastor, Pham ministered at parishes both with and without major Vietnamese presences.
Pham called the multicultural church united in Christ “the beacons of light, the beacons of hope for our country.”
While only about 1% of U.S. Catholics identify as Vietnamese, which includes those born in the U.S., 4% of U.S. priests ordained last year were born in Vietnam, according to Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate.