Archbishop José Gomez: Soft-spoken, hard-line prelate
Since the first busloads of migrants began arriving in Los Angeles from Texas last summer, L.A. Archbishop José Gomez has steered the staff of the country’s largest diocese toward a clear mission: “to find a way to take care of them as much as possible.”
The trips have been grueling, 23-hour bus rides, often without food, that typically end at St. Anthony’s Croatian Catholic Church, which has served as a triage center for asylum-seekers. As Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, has used the bus trips as a cudgel against Democratic policies on immigration, Gomez, himself an immigrant from Mexico, has asserted “the importance of welcoming immigrants” while engaging political leaders to work toward immigration reform.
Gomez’s decades-long advocacy of immigrant and refugee rights is well-established (he has written a book on the subject). A growing number of critics, however, argue that he has recently expended less capital on supporting immigrants’ rights than on denouncing social justice movements and fighting culture war battles. They point, for example, to his 2021 attempt to deny Joe Biden the Eucharist because of the president’s support of abortion rights, and the bishop’s highly visible role in last summer’s protest against the Dodgers’ decision to honor a satirical nonprofit order of nuns for their charitable work on behalf of the LGBTQ+ community. Gomez is widely considered to be more conservative than Pope Francis. When the Vatican made an announcement in December that authorized the blessing of same-sex couples (though still upholding the church’s ban on gay marriage), Gomez’s office did not issue a response.