Catholic priest who criticized Trump immigration crackdown named West Virginia bishop
CHARLESTON, W.Va.: The next bishop for West Virginia Catholics will be an El Salvador-born advocate for immigrants who has opposed US President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown policies.
Pope Leo XIV announced Friday the appointment of the Most Rev. Evelio Menjivar-Ayala, an auxiliary bishop in Washington, D.C., as the new leader of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, which comprises West Virginia, one of the nation’s least racially diverse states.
Menjivar-Ayala, 55, fled El Salvador’s civil war as a teen in the late 1980s, eventually crossing illegally into the United States in 1990, he told Associated Press in an interview last year. But within “a couple of weeks” he gained humanitarian protection, later was granted a visa as a religious worker, and became a US citizen two decades ago.
Nonetheless, he feels close to immigrants who have been caught up by raids, including last year’s federal law enforcement surge in Washington, because “that could have been me,” he said in 2025.
The Catholic Church has long advocated for humane treatment of migrants and refugees in the United States and around the world. Menjivar-Ayala and other US church leaders have strongly condemTrump administration’s mass deportation policies while also affirming a nation’s right to control its borders and urging reconciliation.
New bishop to prioritize those on the margins
Menjivar-Ayala did not mention immigration policies nor Trump is his speech Friday, instead focusing on his desire to be accepted by West Virginians and his willingness to listen to the community. A portion of his speech was in Spanish.In the Washington archdiocese, which includes the District of Columbia and parts of Maryland, more than 40% of parishioners are Latino. In West Virginia — all of which is covered by the Wheeling-Charleston diocese — only 2.4% of the population is Latino and 92.6% of its 1.77 million residents identify as white, according to the US Census.
Menjivar-Ayala replaces the Most Rev. Mark Brennan, 79, who has served as West Virginia’s bishop since 2019. Brennan had taken over after a scandal over a former bishop’s sexual harassment of adults and lavish spending of church money. In a shared news conference in Wheeling on Friday, Brennan reminded WesBut he loves all the people here. He’s not going to be bishop just for one group within the diocese. He’ll be bishop for all the people. I can assure you of that.”
The new bishop, who has spent his ministerial career in the nation’s capital and surrounding communities, will work in a less Catholic and more rural region, overseeing the diocese’s 61,000 Catholics and 92 parishes throughout West Virginia