In his first week since being nominated Archbishop of Detroit, Edward Weisenburger denounced Donald Trump’s immigration policies, and criticized the president’s plan to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
Pope Francis nominated Arizona Bishop Weisenburger for the position on February 11; he is slated to replace outgoing Detroit Archbishop Allen Vigneron, who resigned from the post in 2023 after serving the diocese since 2009. An Illinois native, Weisenburger comes to Detroit from the city of Tucson, Arizona, where he has been since 2017.
Weisenburger wasted no time after being appointed to attack the Trump administration, taking issue with efforts to eliminate USAID spending.
“In our culture, when we don’t have to see that person, see that process, we can kind of close our minds to it, but I don’t think a Christian can do that,” Weisenburger said in an introductory press conference this week. “I think we have to keep it in our minds, and I would say that the amount of help that we as the wealthiest nation in the world, the most blessed nation, that amount of assistance we’ve been providing, typically around the world, to the world’s very poorest, is a part of who we are, it’s in our DNA as American people, and I hope that we never stray from that.”
Elon Musk chose USAID as the first target in his campaign to root out waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal bureaucracy, effectively shutting down the agency after publicly identifying dozens of examples of the agency using taxpayer funds to promote niche, left-wing causes in foreign countries.
In 2018, Weisenburger suggested that the church should issue “canonical penalties” for Catholics “who are involved in” enforcing Trump-era immigration laws at the border. Canonical penalties can include withholding Holy Communion or excommunication from the Church.
“Canonical penalties are there in place to heal,” Weisenburger said at the time. “And therefore, for the salvation of these people’s souls, maybe it’s time for us to look at canonical penalties.”
In December, Weisenburger expressed his “grave concern” in an op-ed about “the threat of mistreatment of undocumented persons who are our neighbors and contribute to our communities.”
Weisenburger’s anti-Trump sentiment mirrors that of Pope Francis’s, who this week rebuked the Trump administration’s approach to immigration, saying that the “initiation of mass deportations” has caused a “major crisis.”
The Arizona bishop is also an environmental justice advocate. In 2023, he met with a group of bishops at the White House to talk to then-President Joe Biden about the pope’s environmental agenda.
In early 2021, Weisenburger closed Catholic Churches in Tucson for one month to slow the spread of Covid. He allowed funerals and weddings to be celebrated indoors at limited capacity.
“A period of four weeks should make a considerable difference in the availability of the Covid vaccine for those most at risk,” he said. “Hopefully it also will help us to evaluate more accurately the anticipated post-Christmas spike in infections and resulting hospitalizations.”
The bishop directed priests in his diocese not to grant religious exemption requests for the Covid vaccine. Although many “appropriately cite a repugnance at the use of vaccines procured through the cell lines that originate in an aborted fetus,” Weisenburger wrote in 2021, “all current anti-Covid-19 vaccines may be received by the faithful without moral compromise.”