Pope Leo XIV announced on Friday that Evelio Menjivar-Ayala, a longtime Catholic leader in the Washington, D.C., area who has criticized Trump administration immigration crackdown policies, will become bishop of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston. The appointment makes Menjivar-Ayala the next leader for the West Virginia diocese, which covers the state and is home to 92 parishes and about 61,000 Catholics.
Menjivar-Ayala, 55, fled El Salvador’s civil war as a teenager in the late 1980s. He later told The Associated Press that he crossed into the United States illegally in 1990, received humanitarian protection within “a couple of weeks,” and was later granted a visa as a religious worker before becoming a U.S. citizen two decades ago.
In a portion of a speech after the announcement, Menjivar-Ayala did not single out U.S. immigration policy or President Donald Trump. Instead, he focused on his readiness to serve West Virginia Catholics and said he wants to listen broadly to the community, including the state’s workers and immigrants. “I have much to learn, but my heart is ready and wide-open,” he said, adding: “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 diocese serves a population that is far less diverse than Washington’s archdiocese, where more than 40% of parishioners are Latino. In West Virginia, according to U.S. Census figures cited in the report, only 2.4% of the population is Latino, while 92.6% of the state’s 1.77 million residents identify as white.
Menjivar-Ayala will replace Mark Brennan, 79, who has led the Wheeling-Charleston diocese since 2019. Brennan took over after a scandal involving a former bishop’s sexual harassment of adults and lavish church spending, and he said in remarks at a shared news conference Friday that the bishop’s focus would be on all people in the region. “But 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.”
In preparing to take charge of a “less Catholic and more rural region,” Menjivar-Ayala said West Virginia—while known for its mountains and natural resources—remains a state where many people face “hardship, marginalization and inequality.” The report said he has spent much of his ministerial career in the nation’s capital and surrounding communities before the move to lead across West Virginia.
Menjivar-Ayala has been lauded for advocacy on immigration, including during his time in Washington. Cardinal Robert McElroy praised him in a statement, saying Menjivar-Ayala’s work reflected “his passion for justice and sensitive care for the Hispanic and immigrant communities of our Archdiocese,” which McElroy said “have planted seeds of grace that will yield a harvest here for decades to come.”
The appointment comes after Menjivar-Ayala wrote in the Catholic Standard, the official newspaper of the Washington archdiocese, that Trump’s approach had intensified the situation for migrants. In that article, he wrote: “Each day this situation is getting worse and more ominous,” describing what he said were “highly visible operations of questionable legality that go far beyond mere immigration ‘enforcement.’” The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the appointment.
Pope Leo’s announcement also followed other U.S. bishop appointments on Friday, including the selection of John Gomez to start as bishop of the Diocese of Laredo, Texas, on June 30. Gomez was born in Colombia, came to the United States on a student visa in 2002, and became a U.S. citizen in 2021, according to his current diocese in Tyler, Texas. Menjivar-Ayala’s installation is scheduled for July 2.