Like old times: The archbishop takes on the governor

It was common in the Middle Ages for Catholic bishops, including the pope, to clash with kings, dukes and other political leaders.

The clashes sometimes were violent, with troops loyal to each side engaging in combat. In 1376, mercenaries in the employ of Cardinal Robert of Geneva waged a brutal campaign against a league of northern Italian city-states for control of territory that was claimed by the papacy.

Nothing that dire is going on in Florida, but a war of words has been engaged between its top political leader and the Catholic archbishop of Miami, whose authority as metropolitan extends over the entire state.

On February 7, Gov. Ron DeSantis held a “roundtable” event in Miami, which was basically an orchestrated opportunity to score points in his stealth presidential bid by taking potshots at the Biden administration on the issue of immigration. DeSantis has taken a hard line on immigration, and in December, he ordered the Department of Children and Families to stop issuing or renewing licenses of any charitable organization that resettles unaccompanied immigrant minors, unless the organizations are under an existing cooperative agreement.

The roundtable was held at the American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora, where DeSantis tried to discredit any comparison between unaccompanied minors from Central America today and the “Pedro Pan” minors who were sent away from Cuba by their families in the 1960s and were taken in by charitable agencies. He said, “… to equate what’s going on with the southern border... with Operation Pedro Pan, quite frankly is disgusting.”

Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami had heard enough. His archdiocese operates a program under Catholic Charities that offers shelter and other services for unaccompanied and undocumented minors. The children are housed in the Msgr. Bryan O. Walsh Children’s Village, which was begun to care for many of the “Pedro Pan” minors.

Wenski ripped off a statement that correctly called the so-called roundtable “political theater” and “a new low in the zero-sum politics of our divisive times,” although he erred in misapplying DeSantis’ “disgusting” adjective to the minors themselves.

“Children are children — and no child should be deemed ‘disgusting’ — especially by a public servant,” the statement said.

Wenski also revealed in a separate interview that Florida’s Catholic bishops, at an earlier meeting with DeSantis, had tried to persuade him to reconsider his policy on unaccompanied minors. The roundtable, Wenski said, may have been the governor’s way of doubling down “because he didn't expect the pushback that he is now receiving on this from our community.”

Last week, DeSantis’ press secretary, Christina Pushaw, fired another salvo. She tweeted that Wenski “lied” about what DeSantis said and that “Lying is a sin.”

Wenski is no liberal. He was appointed Archbishop of Miami by the tenaciously conservative Pope Benedict XVI, and when he was bishop of the Diocese of Orlando, prior to his promotion to Miami, he owned a Honda Goldwing motorcycle that he routinely rode in poker runs to raise money for charity.

I interviewed him on several occasions and found him to be intellectually acute, articulate, media-savvy, politically shrewd and a fierce defender of the church. He also speaks Spanish and has a longstanding interest in immigration, dating back to his days as a parish priest in Miami. DeSantis – who is Catholic, although you wouldn’t know it from how little he talks about it – is facing a formidable opponent in the top leader of his own faith in the state. However, as Jacksonville commentator Jacob Lupfer puts it, DeSantis seems to be choosing Trumpism over Catholicism.

With the possible exception of the Mennonites, no religious group has a better track record in caring for immigrants than the Catholic Church. Its social teaching is long and deep, its agencies are well-established and well-funded, and it is one area in which public sympathy is on its side. No one wants to see children frightened and alone, and DeSantis simply comes off as an ogre for shutting down people trying to help them.

A footnote to the medieval clash I mentioned earlier. Cardinal Robert lost the military campaign against the northern league, but he achieved another kind of victory. He was elected Pope Clement VII and set up headquarters not in Rome but in Avignon, France.

Cary McMullen is a retired journalist and the former religion editor of The Ledger.

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Like old times: The archbishop takes on the governor