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Bishop Alberto Rojas of the Diocese of San Bernardino lifted the obligation for members to celebrate Mass if they had a “genuine fear of immigration enforcement actions.”
July 10, 2025Updated 1:36 p.m. ET
The Diocese of San Bernardino has told its parishioners that they do not have to attend Mass for fear of federal immigration raids.
Bishop Alberto Rojas, the leader of the Roman Catholic community of about 1.6 million worshipers in Southern California, said in a letter on Tuesday that members who face a “genuine fear of immigration enforcement actions” if they attend Mass on Sundays or holidays are “dispensed from this obligation.”
The lifting of the obligation for Catholics is a rare step usually reserved for extenuating circumstances such as the Covid pandemic.
The diocese in San Bernardino, 60 miles east of Los Angeles, is at least the second to excuse its members from Mass as the Trump administration escalates Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids nationwide.
ICE agents, who are often masked, have detained people in shopping center parking lots and at carwashes, bus stops and other public places. In May, armed men in face coverings detained a Latino man outside a church in the Los Angeles suburb of Downey, in what pastors believed was an immigration raid.
In May, after immigration raids in Nashville, that city’s diocese said in a statement that “no Catholic is obligated to attend Mass on Sunday if doing so puts their safety at risk.”
