By 
Jan 20, 2026 / 12:21 pm (CNA).
Catholics are offering mixed reactions to the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term, which included domestic policy actions that align with U.S. bishops on gender-related issues, and also tensions over immigration, expansion of the death penalty, and reduced funding for organizations that provide food and basic support to people in need.
Trump secured his electoral victory in 2024 with the help of Catholics, who supported him by a double-digit margin, according to exit polls. A Pew Research Center report found that nearly a quarter of Trump’s voters in 2024 were Catholic.
Throughout his first year, Trump — who calls himself a nondenominational Christian — has invoked Christianity and created a White House Faith Office. He created a Religious Liberty Commission by executive order in May 2025 and became the first president to issue a proclamation honoring the Catholic feast of the Immaculate Conception in December.
Last year, the president also launched the “America Prays” initiative, which encouraged people to dedicate one hour of prayer for the United States and its people in preparation for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 2026.
Immigration, poverty, and NGOs
John White, professor of politics at The Catholic University of America, said the first year of Trump’s second term “challenged Catholics on many levels.”
“The brutality of ICE has caused the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to issue an extraordinary statement at the prompting of Pope Leo XIV,” White said, referring to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) issued a special message in November opposing indiscriminate mass deportations, calling for humane treatment, urging meaningful reform, and affirming the compatibility of national security with human dignity.
The Trump administration, with JD Vance, the second Catholic vice president in U.S. history, cut billions of dollars in funding to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), which financially damaged several Catholic nonprofits that had received funding. Trump also signed into law historic cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
“The cuts to NGO funding, SNAP, and Medicaid benefits, alongside the huge increases in health care costs, have hurt the poor and middle class at home and around the world,” he said. “Instead of being the good Samaritan, Trump has challenged our Catholic values and narrowed our vision of who we are and what we believe. JD Vance’s interpretation of ‘Ordo Amoris’ of a hierarchy to those whom we love rather than a universal love is a case in point and has been repudiated by Pope Francis and Pope Leo XIV,” he said.
The cuts aligned federal policy with the administration’s agenda, which included strict immigration enforcement, mass deportations of immigrants who are in the country illegally, and less foreign aid support.
Catholic Charities USA was previously receiving more than $100 million annually for migrant services, and the Trump administration cut off those funds. In response, the organization scaled back its services.
Since Trump took office, the administration said it has deported more than 600,000 people.
Karen Sullivan, director of advocacy for the Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC), which provides legal services to migrants, said she is “very concerned about the way that immigration enforcement has been carried out,” adding her organization is “very concerned that human dignity of all persons [needs to] be respected.”
Sullivan said the administration is “enabling their officers to use excessive force as they are taking people into custody” and “denying access to oversight at their detention centers.” She also expressed concern about the administration increasing fees for asylum applications and giving agents more leeway to conduct immigration enforcement at sensitive locations, such as churches, schools, and hospitals.
She said the large number of deportations and the increase in expedited removals has “been a strain” on organizations that seek to provide legal help to migrants.
CLINIC receives inquiries from people who are facing deportation and also those who fear they may be deported. She said: “The worry and the fear among those people [who may face deportation] makes them seek out assistance and advice even more often.”
“The pace of the changes that have been happening in the past year have been very difficult to manage,” she said. “We are having to respond very quickly to changes.”
Executive actions on gender
Susan Hanssen, a history professor at the University of Dallas (a Catholic institution), viewed the first year of Trump’s second term in mostly successful terms.
“As Catholics we know that the law educates, and during Trump’s first year in office we witnessed an actual shift in public opinion on the LGBT/transgender ideology due to his asserting the scientific and natural common sense that there are only male and female,” Hanssen said.
Trump took executive action to prohibit what he called the “chemical and surgical mutilation” of children, such as hormone therapy and surgical transition. He signed a policy restricting participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports. He legally recognized only two genders, determined by biology: male and female.
“His strong executive action on this essential point — domestically in making the executive branch remove its trans-affirming language, the executive department of education stop subverting parental rights over their children, and women’s rights in sports, and (importantly) putting an end to USAID’s [U.S. Agency for International Development] pushing this gender agenda on the countries who need our economic assistance,” she said.
“This has led to a genuine public shift, with fewer independent corporations choosing to enforce June as LGBT Pride month on their customer base, fewer DEI programs pushing the gender agenda on hiring, and a shift (especially among young men) towards disapproval of gender transitioning children and even towards disapproval of the legalization of so-called same sex ‘marriage,’” she added. “We will need to see how these executive branch victories will affect judicial and legislative action moving forward.”
Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, senior ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, had a similar view of some of the social changes.
“The current administration has focused significant energy on the important task of ‘putting folks on notice,’ so it’s hard to deny, for example, that the misguided medico-pharmaceutical industry that has profited handsomely from exploiting vulnerable youth and other gender dysphoric individuals can no longer miss the loud indicators that these practices will not be able to continue unabated,” he said.
Death penalty
Trump signaled a renewed and more aggressive federal capital-punishment policy in 2025, in opposition to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which teaches that the death penalty is “inadmissible.”
Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office directing the Justice Department to actively pursue the federal death penalty for serious crimes. He also directed federal prosecutors to seek death sentences in Washington, D.C., homicide cases. His administration lifted a moratorium on executions, reversing a pause in federal executions and following President Joe Biden’s commutations of federal death sentences.
Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, then-president of the USCCB, in a Jan. 22, 2025, statement called Trump’s support for expanding the federal death penalty “deeply troubling.” Newly elected USCCB president Archbishop Paul Coakley likewise called for the abolition of the death penalty.
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Define “Catholic.”
Does “Catholic” mean someone who’s only been baptized a Catholic?
Does “Catholic” mean someone baptized Catholic and received 1st Communion?
Does “Catholic” mean someone who’s received all the Sacraments of Initiation?
Does “Catholic” mean anyone who says they are Catholic?
Does “Catholic” mean someone who once was a regular churchgoer but no longer attends Mass at all?
Does “Catholic” mean someone who rejects major teachings of the Catholic faith?
Does “Catholic” mean anyone who supports abortion?
Does “Catholic” mean only those who currently accepts all that the Catholic Church teaches and attends weekly Mass?
Does “”Catholic” mean someone who financially supports the Catholic Church, receives Holy Communion during the Easter Season and Confesses one’s sins at least once a year?
You see, unless you’re specific about your reference group, polls and stats are meaningless. And besides, anything reported by CNA is highly suspect.
Deacon: I agree. Although canon law makes these differences clear, in general lay people don’t. This creates problems.
Great comments given the very different, to mutually exclusive world views between Traditional and modern Catholicism, the former conforming the world to God, the latter conforming go to their World. I often wonder to which of the two world views a convert joins. I must straddle the two world views to attend Mass as a conservative though my Bishop and priests are liberals (to a fault).
John White lost his credibility when he used the phrase ” the brutality of ICE”. Bogus lie. In my opinion, given the brutal rapes, murders, and child sex assault these illegals are often convicted of, ICE has not been brutal enough. And I challenge Mr. White to provide an example of supposed brutality on the part of ICE. Its discouraging to see people who advocate kid glove treatment for violent criminals who are not citizens and have no business being here. Such political liberals have a demonstrated inability to connect the dots of how unabated criminality destroys civil society, apparently cannot process reality, and live in denial of what they see in front of their nose. I will hazard a guess that such political partisans want to protect these illegal thugs, as long as they dont live in the house next door and they are someone else’s problem. Pathetic.
Lj: evil does not justify evil. Innocent until proven guilty.
I don’t think “Brutality” was a good choice of words, either. There’s enough inflammatory & divisive language going on as it is.
John White, professor of politics at The Catholic University of America, said the first year of Trump’s second term “challenged Catholics on many levels.”
“The brutality of ICE has caused the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to issue an extraordinary statement at the prompting of Pope Leo XIV,”
Professor of politics? If he was any good at it, he’d be a practitioner, not chirping at a student audience who through lack of life experience and dependency on grades lack the ability to dispute such blatant propaganda.
The evil Edward Bernays, author of the book entitled PROPOGAGA and designer of the “Torches of Freedom” campaigns which encouraged women to become addicted to cigarettes as emancipation and equality with men, surely approves of “Professor” White.
The author, if he had matured beyond the level of a second-year undergraduate would have done more than parrot such propaganda and forced the Professor to define or qualify his use of the word.
“Professor of politics? If he was any good at it, he’d be a practitioner:” your contempt for academia is noted. Professors of history should be ? All professors of literature are bad because they’re not supporting themselves by writing? And mathematicians, biologists, psychologists…. If all these people are working in universities because they’re not smart enough to practice (whatever that means) their area of study then how do people learn from them? People with degrees in politics or political studies can’t know anything, then, because their professors aren’t any good?
In line with Leo XIV and the USCCB it was convincing to this writer that our president made a grave error in projecting a vindictive, unAmerican image of merciless brutality. We named holding facilities Alligator Alcatraz, The Dungeon, Speedway Slammer, and so forth. That plus the image of Kristi Noem with tight jeans, sweater, long hair and cowboy hat, viewing half naked tattooed men encaged like rabbits in El Salvador’s detention center, probably the most inhumane prison on this planet.
Stupidity and gloating. It was obvious that we accomplished a readymade agenda for the Left and would likely lose independents, a good number of Catholics in the midterm elections. We left Pope Leo with little choice but to condemn, at least the image of brutality and humiliation. Nor could the USCCB condone this.
ICE must continue the process of deportation of illegals who were putatively allowed to enter for sake of establishing a voting bloc. Although the deportations are just, we must exhibit better, intelligent, and somewhat more humane consideration of illegals, despite the heinous criminals among them – illegals who are also human beings.
In line with Leo XIV and the USCCB it was convincing to this writer that our president made a grave error in projecting a vindictive, unAmerican image of merciless brutality. We named holding facilities Alligator Alcatraz, The Dungeon, Speedway Slammer, and so forth. That plus the image of Kristi Noem with tight jeans, sweater, long hair and cowboy hat, viewing half naked tattooed men encaged like rabbits in El Salvador’s detention center, probably the most inhumane prison on this planet.
Stupidity and gloating. It was obvious that we accomplished a readymade agenda for the Left and would likely lose independents, a good number of Catholics in the midterm elections. We left Pope Leo with little choice but to condemn, at least the image of brutality and humiliation.
Fr. Peter: thank you, well put.
In his first year of the second term, the Federal Government added $2 Trillion to the national debt. Our national debt is a big problem. We should not be cutting taxes with these big deficits.
Romney noted at that luncheon speech caught on tape, that 50 million pay nothing, and that paved the way for his defeat.
How many people are there in the country? 350M or so – see the problem?
There was an Irving Berlin song back in the 30s I think, during the depression. “Let’s have another cup of coffee” let’s have another piece of pie etc (even though the skies are gray)
You cannot keep cutting taxes and increasing spending. Some so called “conservatives” want to increase the defense budget by 50%, $1 trillion to s1.5 trillion. This is insanity.
In my lifetime, we fought two unnecessary wars, Vietnam and Iraq on borrowed money. More insanity. This nonsense with Greenland will only make things worse. We must live within our means and cease unnecessary wars.
Sure, we should keep paying taxes for fake Somali “day cares”.
How much taxes do you pay?
The fake Somali daycares are a criminal activity. Investigate and prosecute.
I pay plenty of taxes, Federal, State and Local. We do need schools, roads, police,etc.
I do not want a tax cut.
But you didn’t answer his question. Why not?
If you add everything together,including property tax,perhaps around $50K. So what?
Then calculate your tax liability under the rules that suit you and under the rules that exist and note the difference. The 1040 calculations only calculate the MINIMUM liability, you are free to pay more.
Make a check for the difference and send it to this address:
Gifts to the United States
U.S. Department of the Treasury
Reporting and Analysis Branch 2
P.O. Box 1328
Parkersburg, WV 26106-1328
Why don’t you be honest and admit what you really want is that nobody else gets a tax cut and you can’t possibly imagine any interruption for that spending orgy of which schools, roads, police are sliver of the total.
You do know lying is a sin, right?
So I am a liar? Perhaps you can walk across a swimming pool?
Of the “600,000” total deportees, here are some important details about the 100,000 deported in the first half of 2025:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-administration-ice-data-shows-less-than-1-of-deportees-had-murder-convictions/
Peter – from you post, I’m not sure if you are trying to make the point that the deported are not all that dangerous – which is implied by the title of the CBS article. Or you were simply linking to an article that has some interesting statistics. I would note that the 0.6% quoted in the article for convicted murderers is about three times the murder rate for the US population. We have enough “home grown” crime without the need to import more. Germany, France and other EU countries are finding that migrants are responsible for some 40% of certain crimes.
In the Catholics Express Mixed Vews on Trump’s first year of his second term we have:
A Catholic University professor referring to the brutality of ICE and cuts to NGO’s,
The director of legal services to immigrants saying ICE is using excessive force,
A University of Dallas history professor who viewed Trump in mostly successful terms along with a priest senior ethicist,
And, to be expected two bishops opposed him on the death penalty.
No real surprises here, and no real representative sample of “Catholics express mixed views…”
Crusader: Do you really think a MAGA, Trump supporter would expose any abuses? If they did they would be disowned and thrown under the bus.
If I had to ask CBS for directions how to get from here to there and they told me to go 1 mile straight ahead and turn left and I’d run right into it – I’d turn around 180 degrees, go straight ahead and turn right and without a doubt I’d run right into my destination.
TPR: “The author, if he had matured beyond the level of a second-year undergraduate would have done more than parrot such propaganda and forced the Professor to define or qualify his use of the word”….. Exactly right!
Also – If I had to ask CBS for directions how to get from here to there and they told me to go 1 mile straight ahead and turn left and I’d run right into it – I’d turn around 180 degrees, go straight ahead and turn right and without a doubt I’d run right into my destination.
What exactly is “indiscriminate mass deportation”? If you are here illegally, you are subject to a return to your home country from which you can then apply to come here legally. Migrants who come to the US illegally know from day one that they are breaking the law and can be sent home any time, and they are sent home, not to prison, a gulag, a concentration camp, etc. They take a risk when they come here and they know that.
“Not to prison, a gulag, a concentration camp etc.” that is the problem. No issue with returning them to home country. The problem is the WAY it is being done. It should be done in a firm, but orderly way. Families should go together and have a time to settle matters first. Don’t just yank individuals from place of work and send them away from children etc. Policies need to be adapted and followed regarding their legal status and record of conduct while in this country. Paths to legal residence to those who would make good citizens and contribute to our society should be made. Many of these people have been here for years and are well integrated into our way of life. These people should not be broad brushed, they are not all the same. They came here for many different reasons. Only a very small number of them are drug dealers, murders, gang members etc. Many are members of our Churches. We must stand up to the government when they resort to measures which go against Church teachings.
Consider the alternative – Kamala Harris and (Tampon) Tim Walz
Shirley you jest?
James Connor: Do you really think a leftist, a Trump Derangement Sufferer wouldn’t describe any enforcement as abuses? If they did they would be disowned and thrown under the bus.
SJW’s always lie, always project…..
Trump is a traitor to democracy. End of story
He was elected by democracy.
Marlene, you got it right! Where else is there a democracy where the peoples elected government can be ignored by someone whose entire program is devoted to making money for himself and punishing those who do not bow down to his outrageous demands. America should try real democratic government – there are a number of good examples outside the insular USA to learn from.