New Jersey Cardinal Joseph Tobin talks detention centers and saying ‘no’ to the violence, after ICE officers fatally shot a protester in Minneapolis.
Cardinal Joseph Tobin, leader of New Jersey’s biggest Catholic diocese, grew up in a working-class Detroit neighborhood, the oldest of 13 in his Irish Catholic family. From a young age, he was exposed to life on the margins.
For much of his childhood, the Tobins lived in one half of a duplex, where they shared a lone bathroom. His father died at 54 of a heart attack, leaving his mother to raise her large brood single-handedly.
Tobin stuck around his hometown after becoming a priest at 26, as Detroit’s economy decayed in 1970s. He has kept that everyman vibe even as he climbed the ranks of the Catholic Church in America. Now the head of the Archdiocese of Newark, Tobin has been known to hit the gym to lift weights. He’s also been open about his battle with alcoholism.
It’s perhaps no surprise then that Tobin, 73, has emerged as one of the Trump administration’s most prominent critics among U.S. religious leaders.
“One way that we say ‘no’ is that we mourn, we do not celebrate death, and, what is probably worse, we do not pretend it doesn’t happen,” Tobin said in late January, during an interfaith prayer service called after two U.S. citizens were shot to death amid Trump’s ramped-up deportation campaign in Minneapolis.
“We mourn for a world, a country that allows 5-year-olds to be legally kidnapped and protesters to be slaughtered,” a somber and tired looking Tobin, speaking from his Newark office, added.
His rebuke went beyond the tactics of immigration officers, seeming to join the chorus of those worried about rising authoritarianism. Tobin quoted from a 1936 Italian novel about resisting fascism. He urged the defunding of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, calling it a “lawless organization.”
Three days later, Tobin, the spiritual leader of 1.3 million North Jersey Catholics, was on PBS for an interview before a national audience. “My hope is that, when people recognize the humanity of the other, they change. On the contrary, if you want to do inhuman things to people, what you strive to do is take away their dignity, to call them names and not recognize them for who they really are.”
To many, those comments carry more weight given Tobin’s close ties to the last two popes — Francis, who elevated him to the College of Cardinals in 2016, and Pope Leo, the first American pope and a fellow Midwesterner.
Tobin himself was discussed as a potential pope before Leo was chosen to succeed Francis last spring.
Seeing U.S. at ‘an inflection point’
It’s not the first time Tobin has rebuked Trump. But he has become more outspoken as the president has become more aggressive in his efforts to expel millions of undocumented immigrants.
“The Cardinal has been very vocal about the call to care for migrants,” said Gregory Hann, a theology teacher at Saint Vincent Academy, a Catholic high school in Newark who has met Tobin on numerous occasions. “He’s passionate about Jesus’ call to ‘welcome the stranger.’ He sees the government’s policies as being directly contrary to the Gospel.”
The Newark Archdiocese did not respond to requests for an interview with Tobin.
Tobin has added his voice to a growing number of faith leaders from an array of denominations who have declared their opposition to ICE in recent months, with many joining the front lines of demonstrations in Minneapolis or speaking out from the pulpit.
The head of one of America’s most diverse dioceses, the multilingual Tobin — he speaks five languages — has long been known as a progressive in the Catholic Church, with a focus on supporting immigrants and welcoming the LGBTQ community.
His critiques of Trump’s immigration policies began in the president’s first term. In early 2017, Tobin accompanied a 59-year-old grandfather from Union City to his deportation hearing in federal court in Newark. He urged other faith leaders to enter the immigration debate in their own communities.
The stakes have only grown higher in the second term, as Trump has expanded his deportation efforts and pushed further on the boundaries of presidential power. In November, Tobin joined 200 other U.S. bishops in a statement condemning the administration’s “indiscriminate mass deportation” policies and expressing concern over conditions in ICE detention centers.
In January, after the U.S. military seized Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on drug charges and Trump said America would claim a share of Venezuela’s oil revenue, Tobin joined fellow cardinals Blase Cupich of Chicago and Robert McElroy of Washington in a public statement urging the administration to adopt a “genuinely moral” foreign policy.
“I would say that we do stand at an inflection point — or maybe I would just simply say a crossroad, where there are different alternatives,” Tobin said in an interview published Jan. 26 with OSV News, which reports on the church.
Hann, who is unsurprised by Tobin’s political leanings, said he’s proud “to have a leader who speaks the truth, even if it’s unpopular.”
Msgr. Richard Arnhols, pastor emeritus of St John the Evangelist in Bergenfield, said Tobin’s activism is “grounded in social doctrine that was put in place after the Second Vatican council and was built upon by every pope since then. Pope Leo has recently spoken about by the current immigration challenges in the U.S. and has encouraged the U.S. bishops to speak out.”
Molded by Detroit and Rome
Tobin’s upbringing and career helped to mold the cleric’s views, he added.
The future cardinal grew up in southwest Detroit, two blocks from the Holy Redeemer Parish, where Tobin’s family worshipped and where he attended elementary school. His mother was a public school teacher and his father was a cost analyst for General Motors.
Tobin has said he knew from an early age that he wanted to be a priest. He was drawn to the Redemptorists, an international Catholic order known for its modest lifestyle and missionary work, he said in a 2010 interview.
“They visited our house, they were in the streets, and they played ball with us. They always seemed to want to work on the other side of the tracks, and I found that very attractive. They offered me an ideal.”
Tobin served for a while as a priest in his hometown parish, but was eventually promoted to lead the Redemptorists in 1997, a position that allowed him to travel to more than 70 countries to visit missionaries. In 2010, Pope Benedict appointed him to the No. 2 position at the Vatican office overseeing religious orders.
As head of the Redemptorists, Tobin “encountered people of various cultures and witnessed poverty firsthand,” said Mark Williams, an author and clergy abuse survivor who has served as an adviser to the Newark Archdiocese. Tobin “came from Irish immigrants and knows the migrant story and today is a shepherd for all,” he said.
His tenure was abruptly cut short however, after Tobin defended American nuns placed under investigation by conservative Catholic leaders who felt the sisters had placed too much emphasis on social justice issues. When Pope Benedict reassigned him to be Archbishop of Indianapolis in 2012, it was viewed as a demotion.
Tobin nonetheless endeared himself to the Indianapolis community with an inclusive and down-to-earth approach. He was offered a chauffer but usually drove himself around the diocese, a New York Times profile noted in 2016. On Twitter, the archbishop’s handle was a simple “@JoeTobin.”
In America, a divided church
Caring for the poor and marginalized is a core Catholic social teaching, and one that Jesus exemplified. But whether Tobin’s comments reflect the wider Catholic community is up for debate. Trump has other Catholic defenders, most notably Vice President JD Vance.
In the United States, the Church tends to be politically divided, noted Thomas Rzeznik, a historian of American Catholicism at Seton Hall University. A Pew Research Center survey out Feb. 9 found 52% of white Catholics approving of Trump’s performance, while 23% of Hispanic Catholics agreed.
But Tobin most definitely stands for the politics of the most recent popes.
“Tobin represents the kind of bishop that Pope Francis was interested in promoting,.” said Rzeznik. “Indianapolis and Newark aren’t places that normally get cardinals, but Pope Francis wanted to promote Tobin because of his personality. Pope Leo also prioritizes the marginalized.”
Williams, the special adviser to the Archdiocese of Newark on clergy sexual abuse cases, praised Tobin as a man who “speaks his mind.”
The two met in 2018 when Tobin delivered a speech responding to a landmark Pennsylvania grand jury report revealing the church’s complicity in decades of child sexual assaults. Tobin prefaced his remarks that day by expressing his sorrow, as well as his hope that the Church could heal. Williams said he was moved by the sincerity.
“I’m not surprised at all about what he’s saying now about ICE,” Williams said. “It’s really coming from the bottom of his heart and is what our Church teaches: to embrace the stranger in our midst.”
Read more on burlingtoncountytimes
