Despite Pope Leo XIV to calling on his Catholic leadership to issue a forceful statement condemning President Donald Trump's "villification of immigrants," Trump loyalists, writes John Kenneth White in The Hill, have responded by declaring war on the Catholic church.

By a nearly unanimous vote, the United State Conference of Catholic Bishops issued their first special message in 12 years, saying they were “saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants,” and “concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care.”

They added that "we are grieved when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school and when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones.”

The bishops then put out a video denouncing the “dehumanizing rhetoric and violence” against those confronted by ICE — over 1.4 million have watched it so far, according to White.

But as clergy members continue to denounce the Trump administration's policies, MAGA has doubled down against the church.

“Boarder czar” Tom Homan condemned the bishops’ letter and the church as “wrong," adding “I’m saying it as not only border czar, I’ll say it as a Catholic. I think they need to spend time fixing the Catholic Church, in my opinion.”

White notes that Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) "accused the Catholic Church of using government grants to profit from services rendered to refugees. Gateway Pundit Jim Hoft charged that the bishops squandered more than $2.3 billion dollars received from the government, and praised Trump for terminating them."

Laura Loomer, Trump loyalist and so-called MAGA whisperer who called Pope Leo a "woke Marxist Pope," posted on X, "Are all of the Jew haters going to be calling out the Catholic bishops and the Marxist American Pope for condemning deportations?”

Matt Walsh, another Trump defender, White explains, "attacked the bishops, saying they didn’t make a video criticizing the Biden administration 'for supporting, funding, and facilitating the mass slaughter of children in the womb,' or 'its support for the castration and sexual mutilation of children.'"...