JD Vance Admitted to Cardinal Dolan He Lied About Church Profiting on Migrant Work

In an interview, the former Archbishop of New York also said the Trump-Vance ICE has targeted, harassed, and entered Catholic parishes. He called it a profound violation of religious freedom.

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In a wide-ranging interview on EWTN, where he criticized ICE operations for “harassing” Catholic parishes, Cardinal Timothy Dolan said that Vice President JD Vance had privately apologized to him for a baseless smear he made against Catholic bishops early last year.

In January 2025, Vance appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation and suggested the U.S. bishops only opposed President Donald Trump’s new immigration raids because the Church was profiting from migrant resettlement.

Citing the $100 million in federal funds Catholic agencies receive to help refugees, Vance mused on-air whether the bishops were “worried about humanitarian concerns, or are they actually worried about their bottom line?”

The implication — that church leaders were cashing in on migrant suffering—sparked immediate outrage.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) flatly rejected Vance’s insinuation, noting that while the Church does receive government reimbursements for refugee services, those funds “are not sufficient to cover the entire cost of these programs.”

Cardinal Dolan was furious, slamming Vance’s comments as “very nasty” and “inaccurate” and publicly urging the vice president to apologize.

The controversy only escalated as the year went on.

In November 2025, the American bishops — with Pope Leo XIV’s encouragement— issued a rare special message denouncing Trump’s mass deportation agenda and the dehumanizing rhetoric that accompanied it.

Pope Leo XIV strongly backed the U.S. bishops’ stance. Speaking to reporters at his residence in Castel Gandolfo, the Pope lamented that many long-time U.S. immigrants were being treated “in a way that is extremely disrespectful, to say the least.”

Migrants in the United States had been “repeatedly disrespected” and even subject to violence, Leo warned, calling on Americans to “look for ways of treating people humanely, treating people with the dignity that they have”.

Facing this united moral front, Vance evidently had a change of heart — albeit behind closed doors. Cardinal Dolan, who retired as New York’s archbishop at the end of 2025, revealed that Vance privately admitted he lied about the bishops’ motives.

“He and I had a little tête-à-tête when he suggested that bishops in the United States were pro-immigrant because we were making money,” Dolan told EWTN News, recalling their conversation.

“And he apologized. He said, ‘That was out of line and that’s not true.’” For such a brash politician, even a private mea culpa was striking.

So far, however, the vice president has offered no public apology for his televised smear.

Our previous Letters from Leo analysis debunking this migrant-profiteering myth documented that the Church actually loses money on refugee ministry.

In the same interview, Dolan offered harsh words for the Trump-Vance ICE raids that targeted Catholic parishes. Dolan revealed the ICE “harassed” and “entered” Catholic parishes in New York City.

He called the acts a profound offense against Catholics’ religious freedom.

Vance spent much of 2025 doubling down on hardline immigration rhetoric even as Catholic leaders worked to set the record straight. But his private concession to Dolan underscores that the original attack was indefensible from the start.

Pope Leo last month appointed a new Archbishop of New York: Bishop Ronald Hicks, a pro-migrant leader from Illinois who spent five years ministering in El Salvador, to succeed Dolan.

Hicks — who was installed earlier this February — has been an outspoken advocate for immigrant rights and aligns closely with Leo’s migrant-first vision.

Replacing Trump’s favorite cardinal and friend Dolan with Hicks sends a powerful signal. It marks a shift in the U.S. Catholic hierarchy, cementing the Church’s resolve to welcome the stranger.