![\"Parishioners](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1770248588_514_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nLos Angeles Archbishop Jos\u00e9 H. Gomez celebrated what he called a \u201cMass for Peace\u201d at Our Lady of the Angels on Wednesday, stopping just short of a direct appeal to the Trump administration to draw down its aggressive immigration enforcement efforts as protesters gathered blocks away. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe are united with everybody in our country praying for peace, and specifically praying for immigrants in our country,\u201d Gomez said during an address from the pulpit Wednesday afternoon. <\/p>\n
\u201cToday, we especially pray for our government leaders, for the law enforcement officers and for those protesting and defending the immigrant families in this struggle here in Los Angeles.\u201d<\/p>\n
As police helicopters buzzed overhead monitoring the demonstration nearby, the archbishop called on God to \u201cawaken again the conscience of Americans.\u201d <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Parishioners fill the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels for a Mass led by Archbishop Jos\u00e9 H. Gomez.<\/p>\n
(Allen J. Schaben \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
His remarks coincided with a student walkout, with teen protesters converging on the Metropolitan Detention Center about a mile away.<\/p>\n
More than 500 students carrying signs and draped in flags gathered at the intersection of Aliso and Los Angeles streets and marched to the jail, where a swarm of police stood behind yellow caution tape.<\/p>\n
Kiro Perez, a freshman from Robert F. Kennedy Community School held a sign above her faded green hair that read \u201cMy parents work more than the President.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m fighting for, my father, my mom, my siblings and everyone else,\u201d Perez said.<\/p>\n
After working for more than a decade, her father had his application for a green card approved less than two years ago, Perez said. She said that for months, he has obsessively checked ICE activity and has lived in fear.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want him to feel scared anymore,\u201d Perez said<\/p>\n
Los Angeles is the largest archdiocese in the United States, home to 3.8 million Catholics<\/a>. A plurality of the faithful are immigrants and the overwhelming majority are Latino. Born in Mexico, Gomez is the first Latino person to serve as archbishop of Los Angeles, and the highest-ranking Latino bishop in the United States<\/a>, according to the church.<\/p>\n Faith leaders have increasingly been at odds with the president, despite longtime strategic alignment between the administration and the ascendant conservative wing of American Catholicism. <\/p>\n Archbishop Jos\u00e9 H. Gomez leads Mass on Wednesday.<\/p>\n (Allen J. Schaben \/ Los Angeles Times )<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know if anyone\u2019s OK with what\u2019s happening right now,\u201d said Isaac Cuevas, the archdiocese senior director of life, justice and peace. \u201cWe shouldn\u2019t be these kinds of people.\u201d <\/p>\n The region\u2019s Catholic institutions responded<\/a> to last year\u2019s aggressive raids with an outpouring of charity, reorganizing many food pantries around grocery delivery and ministering directly to communities many described as under siege. <\/p>\n But the political response was more muted. Some clergy members joined protests, but the church largely shied from similar action at the highest levels. <\/p>\n A nun makes her way through the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels on Wednesday. <\/p>\n (Allen J. Schaben \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n \u201cIt breaks my heart, because I\u2019m an immigrant,\u201d said Lupita Sanchez, a Franciscan nun who joined the Mass on Wednesday. \u201cThe only way that we can help the world is by praying.\u201d <\/p>\n Prayer was at the heart of Gomez\u2019s message Wednesday as well. But other Catholics were more critical.<\/p>\n \u201cThe clergy who are the boots on the ground were out there from Day One, not only doing charity but working for justice,\u201d said Catholic activist Rosa Manriquez. \u201cWe now have quite a few bishops and cardinals coming out and being present, which is very important. As far as our archdiocese is concerned \u2014 not so much.\u201d <\/p>\n Gomez is a longtime member of Opus Dei, a conservative Catholic movement with deep ties to the Trump administration. <\/p>\n Vice President JD Vance underwent a 2019 conversion<\/a> steeped in some of the group\u2019s most prominent thinkers. The late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was a member, and five of the nine sitting justices are conservative Catholics with ties to the group. <\/p>\n Members of the Catholic Church fill the cathedral.<\/p>\n (Allen J. Schaben \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s newest 9th Circuit appointee, Eric Tung, also converted under the movement\u2019s influence. <\/p>\n \u201cDuring the time of the rise of this regime, our archbishop was the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops,\u201d Manriquez said. \u201cTheir silence enabled this. You can\u2019t argue with the statistics of how many Catholics voted for this regime.\u201d <\/p>\n In the 2024 election, 1 in 5 Trump voters identified as Catholic, a Pew Research Center study<\/a> found. <\/p>\n Pope Leo XIV, shown leading a Mass in December, has forcefully condemned the Trump administration\u2019s aggressive tactics.<\/p>\n (Chris McGrath \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n Pope Leo XIV, who became bishop of Rome after Pope Francis\u2019 death last spring, has forcefully condemned the administration\u2019s aggressive tactics, calling them \u201cextremely disrespectful.<\/a>\u201d Last fall, the powerful U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops voted overwhelmingly in support of a \u201cspecial message<\/a>\u201d decrying militarized immigration enforcement and pleading for reform. <\/p>\n \u201cTo our immigrant brothers and sisters, we stand with you in your suffering,\u201d they wrote. \u201cWe oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people.\u201d <\/p>\n Times staff writer Christopher Buchanan contributed to this report. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Los Angeles Archbishop Jos\u00e9 H. Gomez celebrated what he called a \u201cMass for Peace\u201d at Our Lady of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164304,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[79475,51130,79476,51912,7244,3982,719,79474,48,52,51,47,50,49,63,78968,7454,79477,4574,1695,316],"class_list":["post-164303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-catholic-bishops","tag-catholics","tag-deep-tie","tag-gomez","tag-group","tag-immigrant","tag-justice","tag-l-a-archbishop","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-mass","tag-peace","tag-police-helicopter","tag-student","tag-trump-administration","tag-wednesday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Archbishop](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1770248588_144_.jpeg\")
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