estimated reading time: 6 min By Paul A. Djupe and Brooklyn Walker [Image credit: National Catholic Reporter] The selection of the new pope from the global south (as well as from the Chicago south!) sent a signal that Pope Francis’ mission to liberalize the Church was not over, especially when he selected the name Leo (a nod to the 19th century reform Pope Leo XIII – the “Pope of the workers”). So it is perhaps no surprise that, upon his encouragement, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a “Special Message” that is a direct and clear lament of how the Trump Administration is treating immigrants. But they were not just speaking to Trump and ICE, they were also speaking to adherents of the Catholic Church who may not be on the same page as the Bishops and the Pope. We wanted to take the measure of Catholics and immigration, primarily focused on the extent and role that Christian nationalism plays among the faithful. There has been very little attention paid to Catholic Christian nationalism (CN), which is primarily portrayed as a White evangelical worldview, despite the fact that multiple investigations have shown substantial CN among both lay and elite Catholics. We’ll reiterate that point and then show that Catholic Christian nationalists are largely on the same page as other Christian nationalists when it comes to issues adjacent to the bishop’s statement. Using data from a national sample of American adults from October 2024 (weighted to resemble the national adult population), we used the same measure that Andrew Whitehead and Sam Perry used to find that Catholics tend to exhibit Christian nationalism at slightly lower levels than evangelicals, but the median score is still over 50% (see the figure below). This lineup is basically unchanged from previous looks with other data. There is substantial Christian nationalism among American Catholics. The Catholic church is among the most racially-diverse religious denominations in the country – approximately 56% of American Catholics are White and 35% Latino. Recent PRRI data indicates that White and Latino Catholics’ attitudes diverge on issues like climate change and LGBT rights, but what about Christian nationalism support? Our data indicates that White and Latino Catholic Christian nationalism support is virtually indistinguishable. Only our small sample of Black Catholics stand apart (and above) the other Catholic racial groups. As new research is finding, Christian nationalism does not necessarily lead to the same expression of politics across groups. In the most systematic exploration to date, we and coauthors find that Christian nationalism sometimes acts as ingroup protection, but otherwise groups tend to converge in their politics. So, Black Christian nationalists diverge from White ones in their views on voting rights, but march in lockstep on abortion and same-sex marriage. The Catholic Church is often referred to as an immigrant church given how mass immigration has frequently charged and recharged the Church’s membership. But, of course, many adherents are now quite distant from a grandparent or great-great grandparent’s immigration status. Therefore, it’s not clear how different groups of Catholics may respond to immigration. The first figure below shows the link between Christian nationalism and warmth expressed toward “immigrants” (which note is not the same charged language used by Trump or his Administration). We measure warmth with a feeling thermometer, ranging from 0-100, in which lower scores represent cooler feelings. In all religious traditions, warmth toward immigrants cools with increases in Christian nationalism, though to different degrees. We find a 25 degree drop among Catholics and mainline Protestants, but a much more substantial drop of about 50 degrees among evangelicals and non-denominationals. It’s almost a 100 degree drop among the Orthodox, though the number of cases there is very small so proceed with caution. We also had access to a rather strident measure of immigration attitudes, asking respondents if they agree or disagree that “We should round up all immigrants who are in the country illegally, even if it takes setting up encampments guarded by the US military.” If there were differences in expression of warmth toward immigrants across religious traditions (in the figure above), the link of the policy attitude to Christian nationalism is much more scripted (see the figure below). Attitudes rise from nearly strongly disagree among those who reject Christian nationalism to agreement among strident Christian nationalists. In this case, Catholic Christian nationalists look little different from evangelicals, mainliners, or others. To us, this signals how in tune Christian nationalists were with Trump during the campaign, when he repeatedly talked about the use of the military in pursuing his intended mass deportation program that he has attempted to carry out in his second term. As our new research finds, in some cases racial groups may link their Christian nationalism to policies that protect their interests against outgroup incursions. In the figure below, we assess whether racial groups within the Catholic Church link their Christian nationalism to different immigration attitudes. It is evident from the parallel slopes that they do not. While White Catholics, on balance, are more likely to agree with the militarized immigration policy than other groups, increasing Christian nationalism brings the same boost in policy support among all groups. If this seems strange, consider that it resonates with the recent findings of a survey of immigrants by KFF and the New York Times – 81 percent of Republican immigrants approve of Trump’s job on immigration and 93 percent approve of his job on border security. Our data come from well before the Bishops shared their Special Message last week and they did not mince words. “We are disturbed when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement. We are saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants. We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care. We lament that some immigrants in the United States have arbitrarily lost their legal status. We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools. We are grieved when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school and when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones.” It’s not possible to say with certainty how this message is likely to be received by the laity. Some commentators are heralding the “Special Message” as a Catholic answer to Trumpism and the vast abuses his immigration policies have entailed. But reactions to the selection of Pope Leo from American conservatives sure suggest that not many are open to a more liberal position on immigration or anything else. If they are hoping to sway their parishioners, the bishops may have a steep hill to climb. Paul A. Djupe directs the Data for Political Research program at Denison University, is an affiliated scholar with PRRI, the book series editor of Religious Engagement in Democratic Politics (Temple), and co-creator of religioninpublic.blog. Further information about his work can be found at his website and on Bluesky. Brooklyn Walker is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. Learn more about her work on Twitter, Bluesky, or at her website.

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