En route to Marseille, France, to headline a September 2023 migration conference, Pope Francis was speaking to reporters when he offered unsolicited praise for El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz and his strong support of migrants and refugees.
It wasn’t the first time he had singled out the Texas border bishop. “I do not know if he is conservative, or if he is progressive, if he is of the right or of the left, but he is a good pastor,” remarked the pope in a December 2022 interview.
Since the beginning of his papacy in 2013, there’s been a recurring accusation that Francis fails to understand the United States. While he may not regularly break bread with American neoconservatives that way the past two popes were known to do, it’s an unfair and inaccurate charge to levy against history’s first pope from the Global South.
Francis’s knowledge is informed by regular conversations he has with U.S. prelates who are frequent visitors to Rome and by meetings he convenes with groups like the West/Southwest Industrial Areas Foundation who have met with the pope the last three years for free-ranging conversations on the situation of migrants and U.S. political life.
And to top it off, according to his public calendar, Francis meets every Saturday morning with Chicago-born Cardinal Robert Prevost, who advises the pope on bishops’ appointments around the world. Surely, he receives ample information from the U.S. from these figures.
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With thanks to the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) and Christopher White, where this article originally appeared.
