After immigration raids, Southern California Catholic bishop lifts Mass obligation

(RNS) — A Southern California Catholic bishop announced Tuesday (July 8) that he is lifting the obligation for local Catholics to attend Mass if they have reason to fear immigration enforcement after people were detained on church property in two parishes in his diocese.

In his decree, San Bernardino Bishop Alberto Rojas cited “concerns expressed by many of our brothers and sisters regarding fears of attending Mass due to potential immigration enforcement actions by civil authorities.”

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According to canon law, Catholics are required to attend Mass on Sundays and feast days known as “holy days of obligation,” unless they have a serious reason, such as illness, or permission from their pastor not to attend. While many Catholics don’t follow the letter of this law, Catholic bishops only lift the obligation in the most serious circumstances.

John Andrews, a diocesan spokesperson, told RNS the San Bernardino diocese, located in California’s Inland Empire and including San Bernardino and Riverside counties, is the tenth largest diocese in the U.S. and serves a Catholic population of 1.4 million faithful through 94 parishes and 12 missions.

Andrews told RNS that Spanish-language Masses had seen a roughly 50% drop in attendance since immigration raids began. An August 2024 U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ survey counted 82 parishes in the San Bernardino diocese that have Spanish Mass.

Bishop Alberto Rojas. (Photo courtesy Diocese of San Bernardino)

In the decree, the bishop encouraged parishioners to maintain their communion with Christ and the church through alternative spiritual practices, such as prayer, Scripture reading and participation in devotions, as well as attending televised or online Masses. 

A spokesperson for the Diocese of San Bernardino told National Catholic Reporter that ICE carried out detentions at St. Adelaide Parish in Highland and Our Lady of Lourdes in Montclair on June 20. At St. Adelaide, men were chased into the church parking lot and detained there. At Our Lady of Lourdes, a parishioner was apprehended on church property while doing landscaping.

While churches of other Christian traditions had publicly noted immigration raids that had taken place on their property, the June 20 raids in San Bernardino were the first time a diocese confirmed that federal agents had carried out detentions at Catholic churches.

Even before the raids, the diocese had issued guidelines to help parishes respond to the presence of immigration officers, anticipating increased enforcement. The instructions included posting a sign that says the parish is a “private place of worship” and appointing a designated representative to interact with the agents, request their credentials and documentation and notify church authorities in the event of any interaction with ICE.

After President Donald Trump took office, his administration rescinded what had long been standard federal policy restricting immigration enforcement at houses of worship. Since then, religious groups have filed several lawsuits claiming that the change infringes on their religious liberty.

One lawsuit resulted in a court limiting the Trump administration’s ability to carry out raids, but the ruling only applied to the places of worship used by the plaintiffs, including the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, some Quaker groups and the Sikh Temple in Sacramento.

Catholic leaders have largely avoided joining those lawsuits, although one Jesuit parish in San Diego signed on to a lawsuit brought by representatives of several faiths and community organizations.

Even in dioceses where detentions have not occurred on church property, Catholic leaders are saying they are seeing steep decreases in Mass attendance at some parishes because of fear of raids.

In his letter to the faithful in his diocese, Rojas wrote that the dispensation will remain in effect until “the circumstances necessitating this decree are sufficiently resolved.”

In a previous statement, Rojas said he supported law enforcement efforts aimed at violent criminals but described the detentions on parish grounds as random and unprovoked.

Rojas explained in a statement to the media, “The immigrant communities that I speak of are all those peoples who have been in this country for years with no other issues than their legal status, who have contributed to the well-being of the larger community. Most of them are here because they wanted to save their families; they had no other option.” He asked: “I believe that they would love to be legalized, but who can help them?”

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The last time that many dioceses issued special dispensations for missing Mass was for the COVID-19 pandemic. In San Bernardino, a similar special dispensation was in effect from March 2020 through June 2021 because of the virus.

In May, the Diocese of Nashville, Tennessee, released a statement responding to fears about immigration enforcement at parishes, in which it reminded the faithful, “no Catholic is obligated to attend Mass on Sunday if doing so puts their safety at risk,” but the San Bernardino Diocese is the first U.S. Catholic diocese to issue a formal special dispensation.

This story has been updated.