(LifeSiteNews) — Pope Leo XIV selected a Salvadoran man who entered the U.S. illegally as a teenager to become bishop of Wheeling-Charleston, West Virginia.
Pope Leo named Washington Auxiliary Bishop Evelio Menijar-Ayala to be the only Catholic bishop in a state that overwhelmingly voted for President Donald Trump, who largely campaigned on a strict border policy.
“Letters from Leo” writer and reporter Christopher Hale shared Friday that Menijar-Ayala, who has been critical of Trump, made three attempts to enter the U.S. illegally.
“He finally arrived in California in 1990, having been smuggled in the trunk of a car with his brother over the border crossing between Tijuana and San Diego,” Hale wrote.
A 2024 Catholic Standard report shared that Menijar-Ayala applied for asylum after arriving in the country at age 18, gained a work permit and then a green card, and eventually became a U.S. citizen in 2006.
As he worked his first job as a receptionist at a law firm in Los Angeles, he sent money to his family in El Salvador. He worked janitorial and construction jobs before entering seminary, according to Hale.
Menijar-Ayala, like Leo, has been repeatedly critical of Trump’s border and immigration policies.
In 2025, Menijar-Ayala denounced Trump’s immigration enforcement in a Catholic Standard piece, “This Ordeal is the Passion,” in which he compared the situation of illegal immigrants in the U.S. with Christ’s passion.
“Yet, while redemptive suffering is a grace, it would be better still if these injustices and infamies did not happen at all,” the bishop wrote.
He decried recent enforcement actions as a “violation of fundamental human rights.”