Pro-immigrant pastor named bishop of Florida diocese home to Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate [View all]

Source: The Guardian/AP

Fri 19 Dec 2025 15.58 EST
Last modified on Fri 19 Dec 2025 16.15 EST


Pope Leo XIV on Friday named the Rev Manuel de Jesús Rodríguez, now pastor of a predominantly Hispanic church in the Queens borough of New York City, as bishop of Palm Beach, Florida. The diocese is home to the Mar-a-Lago estate of Donald Trump, whose get-tough immigration policies have drawn objections from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Rodríguez has been a staunch advocate for migrants, which make up most of his 17,000 congregants at the Our Lady of Sorrows church – the largest parish in the diocese of Brooklyn, which also oversees churches in Queens. The diocese of Palm Beach comprises about 260,000 Catholics and 54 parishes and missions. On its website, the diocese said that Rodriguez will be ordained and installed at a future date during a mass at the Cathedral of St Ignatius Loyola.

Rodríguez was born in the Dominican Republic and ordained to the priesthood in 2004, in the capital, Santo Domingo. He led the Our Lady of Sorrows parish in the mostly Latino Corona neighborhood of Queens when more than 100 of its parishioners died from Covid-19.

Earlier this year, Rodríguez joined numerous faith leaders across the USin expressing their concern about how the immigration crackdown launched by Trump’s administration had sown fear within their migrant-friendly congregations. In his new assignment, he will lead the diocese where Mar-a-Lago – Trump’s vast south Florida estate – is located. Trump has called the resort the “Center of the Universe”.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/19/palm-beach-bishop-immgration-trump