WHEELING, W.Va. — Pope Leo XIV on Friday named Auxiliary Bishop Evelio Menjivar-Ayala, a 55-year-old Salvadoran immigrant who has become a leading Catholic voice against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, as the new bishop of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston in West Virginia.
The appointment elevates a prelate who entered the United States illegally as a teenager — crossing the border in 1990, he told The Associated Press last year — but who quickly gained humanitarian protection, later received a religious-worker visa, and became a citizen two decades ago. In an interview, Menjivar-Ayala said that the recent surge in federal immigration raids in Washington, where he served as auxiliary bishop, resonated personally. “That could have been me,” he said.
Menjivar-Ayala did not mention immigration policy or President Donald Trump directly during his introductory news conference in Wheeling. Instead, he spoke of his desire to be accepted by West Virginians and his commitment to the marginalized. “I have much to learn, but my heart is ready and wide-open,” he said, before delivering part of his remarks in Spanish. “Above all, I want to listen to the poor. Those in the margins of the church and society. To workers, to the immigrants, because as Matthew 25 says, the way we treat the least is the way we treat Jesus.”
The new bishop’s public criticism of Trump’s policies has been sharp. In a column last year for the Catholic Standard, the Washington archdiocese’s official newspaper, Menjivar-Ayala wrote that the administration’s “shock and awe” campaign of “aggressive threats and highly visible operations of questionable legality” represented a situation that was “getting worse and more ominous” each day. Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington praised Menjivar-Ayala’s advocacy for migrants, saying his “passion for justice and sensitive care for the Hispanic and immigrant communities … have planted seeds of grace that will yield a harvest here for decades to come.”
Menjivar-Ayala succeeds Bishop Mark Brennan, 79, who led the diocese since 2019 following a scandal over his predecessor’s sexual harassment of adults and lavish spending. Brennan, at the joint news conference, sought to reassure the state’s overwhelmingly white population that the new bishop would serve everyone. “He loves all the people here. He’s not going to be bishop just for one group within the diocese. He’ll be bishop for all the people. I can assure you of that.”
The diocese covers the entire state of West Virginia, where only 2.4% of the 1.77 million residents are Latino and 92.6% identify as white. In the Archdiocese of Washington, by contrast, more than 40% of parishioners are Latino. Menjivar-Ayala acknowledged the state’s natural beauty but noted that many residents “continue to endure hardship, marginalization and inequality.”
The appointment comes weeks after Pope Leo XIV publicly differed with Trump over the U.S. war against Iran. On the same day, the Vatican also named the Rev. John Gomez, a Colombian-born priest who came to the U.S. on a student visa in 2002, as bishop of Laredo, Texas. That announcement follows Pope Leo’s first American bishop pick in May 2025: Michael Pham, a Vietnamese refugee, to lead the Diocese of San Diego. The number of priestly ordinations in the U.S. has been declining for decades, making foreign-born clergy essential to many parishes nationwide.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Menjivar-Ayala’s appointment. He will be installed on July 2.