“A Profound Moral Failure” — Cardinal McElroy Leads Outcry After Trump-Vance ICE Killings

It’s an extraordinary moment of moral clarity in Washington: Cardinal Robert McElroy — one of Pope Leo’s three closest American allies — is condemning the deadly force that killed two Americans.

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Late last night, mourners in Minneapolis huddled in the snow around a makeshift shrine of candles and flowers. They were honoring Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old VA hospital nurse and Catholic, who had been shot dead by federal immigration agents just days earlier.

His death came less than three weeks after another local humanitarian, Renee Good, was killed by an ICE officer on January 7.

These two U.S. citizens died protecting their immigrant neighbors, and their names have quickly become rallying cries against President Donald Trump and Vice President Vance’s escalated immigration crackdown.

Now, from the nation’s capital, Cardinal Robert W. McElroy — the archbishop of Washington — has stepped forward to give those cries a thunderous moral voice.

In a joint interfaith statement released today, Cardinal McElroy and a coalition of seven other D.C.-area faith leaders denounced the killings in Minneapolis as nothing less than a national disgrace.

“The murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti have left communities in Minneapolis and across the nation grieving, shaken, and rightly outraged,” the statement begins, calling their deaths “a profound moral failure” that demands immediate attention.

The cardinal and his fellow clergy — including local Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, and other religious figures — declare that every human life has sacred worth, and that commitment “compels us to stand with immigrants and others who are especially vulnerable in this moment”.

McElroy’s coalition rebuked the Trump-Vance White House’s “use of indiscriminate and lethal force against civilians” and warning that when state power is wielded without regard for life and justice, “the foundations of democracy itself are put at risk”.

In a direct challenge to the climate of fear and violence, Cardinal McElroy and the signatories proclaim, “We will not accept the tearing apart of our neighborhoods or the normalization of dehumanization.”

Those words land amid intense unrest in Minneapolis.

Witness videos of Alex Pretti’s final moments have spread nationwide — and they are deeply disturbing. Footage verified by Reuters shows Pretti holding nothing but his phone as he tried to help a woman whom agents had shoved to the ground. Moments later, a swarm of armed agents tackled Pretti on an icy street.

One officer pepper-sprayed him in the face and others pinned him down, while a teammate seized a handgun that Pretti legally carried for safety.

Then, with the unarmed nurse restrained on his hands and knees, agents opened fire at point-blank range — four shots into Pretti’s back — and even continued shooting after he fell motionless.

Pretti’s last recorded words were “Are you okay?” — shouted in concern for the woman he was shielding.

In the statement today, McElroy and other faith leaders honor Renee and Alex precisely for this selfless spirit. “Renee and Alex were killed while seeking justice for their community. We honor their lives by refusing to look away,” they write, urging Americans to choose “courage, conscience, and moral resolve” over the forces of “fear, cruelty, and disorder”.

Not His First Showdown with Trump’s Crackdown

Cardinal McElroy’s forceful stand is not coming out of the blue. Since taking the helm in Washington, he has emerged as one of the most outspoken critics of Trump’s immigration agenda in the U.S. Catholic hierarchy — very much in line with Pope Leo’s vision of a Church that defends the vulnerable.

McElroy received his archbishop’s pallium from Pope Leo XIV in Rome last summer, a symbol of unity with the pope’s mission. And he has indeed acted as a unifying moral voice on these issues.

Just last September, as the Trump administration’s deportation machine accelerated, McElroy delivered a blistering homily at a Mass for migrants in D.C.

He warned that America is witnessing “a comprehensive governmental assault designed to produce fear and terror among millions of men and women” — a campaign intent on making life “unbearable for undocumented immigrants”.

Preaching on the Gospel story of the Good Samaritan, the cardinal challenged Catholics to ask “Who is your neighbor?” and to recognize migrants as neighbors we are called to love. “We must not be silent as this profound injustice is carried out in our name,” McElroy urged, condemning a deportation dragnet “willing to tear families apart” and inflict horrific suffering on children as so much collateral damage.

That moral indictment — “inhumane” and “morally repugnant” were the exact words he used — made headlines and signaled that the Church in the capital would not stay quiet.

Back in July, McElroy told CNN that what was unfolding under Trump went “far beyond” any legitimate enforcement. It had become “a mass, indiscriminate deportation” campaign that “literally rips families apart.”

He described scenes of shock raids — “agents of the government descending on car washers and Costco parking lots to round up whoever they can” — noting this wasn’t about targeting serious criminals at all.

By eliminating safeguards that once kept immigration agents away from churches and schools, the government had created a climate where immigrant families are “afraid even to go to church” —a reality McElroy blasted as “an outrage.”

In June, he joined 19 other Catholic bishops in signing an interfaith letter opposing a congressional push to massively boost funding for ICE and Border Patrol, warning that an expanded “mass deportation campaign” would “separate U.S. families, harm children, and sow chaos in local communities”.

That letter — which McElroy co-signed alongside Catholic sisters and Protestant, Jewish, and Muslim leaders — argued that our nation’s moral test is how we treat those most in need.

It implored lawmakers to pursue humane reforms and “legal avenues for migration” instead of pouring billions into what Pope Leo himself has called “policies of exclusion.”

By speaking out so consistently, Cardinal McElroy has effectively become one of Pope Leo’s point man on social justice in the United States.

He is putting into action the pope’s own plea that the Church “stand with one voice” alongside migrant families and other little ones in danger.

Pope Leo XIV — the first American pope and a staunch champion of the poor — has repeatedly condemned the cruelty of anti-immigrant zealotry. In Cardinal McElroy, that papal message finds a bold echo on American soil.

The Washington prelate’s interventions these past months have served notice that the Gospel will not be muzzled for political expediency.

As he said in September, we are confronting “an unprecedented assault” on millions of families, and only a “sustained, unwavering, prophetic and compassionate” response will suffice.

Defending the “Neighbors” We Lost

That prophetic response now centers on Renee Good and Alex Pretti, the two fallen neighbors whose blood cries out for justice. McElroy’s statement with fellow faith leaders today pointedly calls for accountability from “those entrusted with authority”.

There is a deep urgency in their words. “At this pivotal moment in our nation’s life, we are faced with a choice,” the cardinal and colleagues write: whether to allow fear and violence to define us, “or to respond with courage, conscience, and moral resolve.”

The statement urges officials at every level to end policies that put people in harm’s way and to recommit to the rule of law, life and dignity. This is a direct moral challenge to the Trump-Vance regime, which has tried to justify the Minneapolis shootings as necessary enforcement.

In the hours after Pretti’s death, the nominally Catholic Vice President JD Vance and his colleagues outrageously smeared the slain nurse as an “assassin” and “domestic terrorist,” even claiming he wanted to “massacre” officers.

Those who knew Pretti reject that as a lie: “He was known for his kindness and gentleness,” testified Father Harry Tasto, a Catholic priest who had ministered alongside Pretti for years.

“Please, don’t pay any attention to the vilification from our national leaders,” the priest implored, reflecting the anguish of a community that lost a beloved friend.

From Minneapolis to Washington, the message from America’s faith leaders is resounding. Enough.

No more treating people as targets and collateral damage. No more “engineered chaos” in our streets.

“Throughout history, people of faith have been called to speak when human dignity is threatened,” Cardinal McElroy’s statement reminds us. That call is ringing out right now.

In candlelit vigils and Sunday pulpits, in letters from bishops and rabbis, a united chorus is demanding that our nation’s leaders see migrants and their allies not as enemies, but as brothers and sisters. Renee Good and Alex Pretti believed in that fundamental truth. They lived it, even to the point of giving their lives.

Cardinal McElroy is making sure we do not look away from their sacrifice. And he is making it unmistakably clear that for the Church, standing up for the vulnerable isn’t “partisan” — it’s the very mission of God’s people.

In the words of Pope Leo XIV, it’s how we proclaim and live the Gospel in our time.

The choice before us now, as McElroy insists, is whether we will have the courage to answer that Gospel call. The souls of two good Americans, and the soul of our democracy, hang in the balance.

And as McElroy and others have reminded us, Pope Leo XIV may be a leading champion in this struggle — but he cannot carry it alone. Defending the dignity of God’s children demands the courage and commitment of all of us, here in the United States and across the world.

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