Springsteen Meets New Jersey Bishop After Anti-ICE Anthem Hits No. 1

In a symbolic hometown encounter, Bruce Springsteen had lunch with Bishop O’Connell and local priests just days after his protest song “Streets of Minneapolis” — which slams ICE raids — soared to #1.

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In a Freehold, New Jersey pizzeria on Monday, two Jersey legends shared a table and a message. Rock icon Bruce Springsteen met with Bishop David M. O’Connell of Trenton for an impromptu lunch Feb. 2, arranged by a mutual priest friend.

The bishop — a longtime Springsteen fan — described the get-together as “delightful,” marveling that “given his worldwide fame, [Springsteen] was so humble and low-key. It felt as though we’d known each other for years!”

Their warm conversation about family, faith and Jersey roots was ordinary in tone, but the timing was extraordinary: just days earlier, Springsteen’s searing new protest song Streets of Minneapolis had become the top-selling track in America.

Springsteen’s latest single is an anthem of moral outrage against aggressive immigration raids. He wrote it after federal agents killed two Minneapolis residents — including a Catholic ICU nurse — during Trump-ordered ICE operations.

Backed by a gospel chorus, Streets of Minneapolis pointedly shouts “ICE out now!” and condemns a “state of terror” in immigrant neighborhoods.

The National Catholic Reporter praised the song as a “soundtrack to the liturgy of protest,” noting how Springsteen’s lyrics evoke “bloody footprints where mercy should have stood” and a call to “stand for the stranger in our midst.”

In other words, the rock star has given Americans a kind of hymn for justice in the streets. Fittingly, Streets of Minneapolis hit No. 1 on the charts within a week of its Jan. 28 release, a cultural moment Catholic media hailed as “exactly what it needs to be” in this dark hour.

For Springsteen, this public stand is also a homecoming of faith. The 76-year-old rocker was raised Catholic — attending St. Rose of Lima School in Freehold — and though he drifted from active practice, he insists “once a Catholic, always a Catholic.”

A young Bruce Springsteen is in the bottom row, third from left, in this 1955 photo taken on the side of St. Rose of Lima Church in Freehold, N.J.

His music has long reflected Gospel values of mercy, hope and solidarity with the marginalized. “Springsteen without the Catholic faith is simply not Springsteen,” one commentator has observed.

In his own memoir, Springsteen admitted that the Church “has walked alongside me as a waking dream my whole life.” Indeed, even many nonreligious fans experience Springsteen’s concerts as quasi-spiritual events.

“For many listeners, Springsteen’s music is a spiritual experience — an invitation to meet the Divine through image and song,” NCR’s review noted, adding that Bruce’s faith still quietly informs his art.

Springsteen himself often nods to that heritage — at the 2018 Tony Awards he recalled growing up “surrounded by God and all my relatives… when the church bells rang, the whole clan would hustle up the street” for every wedding and funeral.

Those Catholic roots run deep in “The Boss.”

That legacy is part of why Monday’s meeting felt so meaningful. Here was New Jersey’s most famous son breaking bread with a Catholic bishop, united by concern for immigrants.

It comes at a time when the Catholic Church is increasingly outspoken against harsh immigration policies. Pope Leo XIV has strongly backed U.S. bishops in condemning Trump’s mass deportation drives and the climate of fear wrought by ICE raids.

The pope — himself an American — urged that migrants be treated “humanely, with the dignity that they have,” warning that too often longtime residents are being treated “in an extremely disrespectful” and even violent way by crackdown tactics.

Across the country, many Catholic bishops and priests have echoed Leo’s call for compassion over cruelty, framing the defense of immigrant families as a “pro-life” issue of basic human dignity. Springsteen’s protest aligns squarely with that Gospel-driven stance.

As Bishop O’Connell’s diocese put it, Bruce’s themes “reflect Church teaching” on social justice. In the lunch’s photo, the bishop and the rocker are grinning side by side — an image of faith and art finding common cause.

On a personal note, my own love of Springsteen was cemented 20 years ago through one of his most prayerful songs.

In the wake of 9/11 — the seminal event of my millennial generation’s coming of age — Springsteen stepped forward to help America mourn.

During a televised charity memorial, he performed My City of Ruins, a soulful ballad he’d written about a struggling town, now transformed into a national hymn of healing. Springsteen’s lyrics ring in my ears to this very day twenty five years later:

Now the sweet bells of mercy drift through the evening trees
Young men on the corner, like scattered leaves
The boarded up windows, the empty streets
While my brother's down on his knees

My city of ruins
My city of ruins

Come on, rise up
Come on, rise up

For so many of us young Americans trying to make sense of the attacks, that moment felt like church. Springsteen’s voice gave us permission to grieve and guided us toward hope. In that crisis, as in this one, he drew on his faith-infused imagination to bind wounds and light a candle in the darkness.

The Boss’s meeting with the bishop this week is more than a feel-good photo op — it’s a sign of the times. It highlights how a prophetic Catholic spirit is stirring beyond church walls, in recording studios and street protests alike.

Springsteen, with his raspy poetry and righteous anger, is amplifying the same message Pope Leo and countless Catholics are proclaiming:

We must stand with the stranger in our midst, for they are our neighbors and our brothers and sisters. An ageless rock star and a Jersey bishop coming together over pizza to affirm that basic Gospel truth is something beautiful — and maybe even a little bit holy — in these troubled times.

On behalf of the millions of American Catholics fighting every day for the dignity of our immigrant sisters and brothers, Letters from Leo stands ready to labor shoulder to shoulder with Bruce Springsteen — and with anyone of conscience — willing to stand up for human dignity and tell the truth about what is happening in our country.

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