In Catholic leaders’ turf battle with the federal government, they are calling in the devout.
The Catholic dioceses of El Paso and Las Cruces are calling the faithful to Sunland Park’s Mount Cristo Rey on Sunday evening to ascend the mountain for a Mass beneath the outstretched arms of a 29-foot limestone statue of Jesus Christ, whose open palms face a stretch of Chihuahuan Desert that remains, for now, unwalled.
Federal authorities want to change that. U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced plans last summer to build border wall along the southern edge of property owned by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Las Cruces. After the church refused, the government announced in May it would use eminent domain to seize roughly 14 acres, offering $180,000 — what government lawyers called fair market value.
The case has sparked a lawsuit over the land which a federal judge in New Mexico ordered this week may continue.
The pilgrimage is the latest front in a nearly yearlong dispute over the mountain’s southern acres. Border authorities have cast the issue as a matter of border safety, while the Catholic Church has argued it is a matter of religious freedom. The battle is part of a broader wave of Catholic leaders pushing back against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, embracing immigrants as central to the identity of both the church and the United States.
‘Sacred space’
The story of the mountain begins with a priest on the outskirts of El Paso.
Father Lourdes Costa gazed from his window one morning in 1933 and envisioned a monumental construction at the mountain’s summit. After early excursions and placeholder crucifixes, the Diocese of Las Cruces purchased the land from the state of New Mexico.
Since the statue was installed, the site has drawn swaths of Catholic pilgrims to make the 5-mile climb to its peak.
The church has argued the Trump administration’s proposed construction would desecrate the holy site.
“The erection of a border wall through or along this holy site could irreparably damage its religious and cultural sanctity, obstruct pilgrimage routes, and transfer sacred space into a symbol of division,” diocese lawyers wrote in a recent legal filing, citing First Amendment protections and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
New Mexican file photo
“For nearly a century, the people of this region have come to this mountain — the people’s mountain — in faith and humility to seek that which transcends boundaries and human limitations,” said Bishop Peter Baldacchino of the Las Cruces Diocese in a statement.
Baldacchino, joined by Bishop Anthony Celino of the El Paso Catholic Diocese, will celebrate Mass atop the mountain Sunday.
“This pilgrimage is not against the government, against a policy or anything else. It is for the church; it is for unity and it is for religious freedom,” Baldacchino said.
Federal authorities have argued the mountain — one of the few unwalled segments of border in the area — is a hot spot for migrant crossings. On a February 2025 visit by The New Mexican to the mountain, border patrol vehicles were posted every few hundred feet along a road the church permitted the government to build at no cost.
But church officials have drawn a line at border wall construction. They have cited, alongside moral opposition to the wall, the possibility of the barrier disrupting pilgrims’ journeys — and blasting due to its construction endangering the integrity of the mountaintop crucifix itself.
CBP spokesperson John Mennell disputed the framing in an email this week, writing that wall construction would fall within 250 feet of the international boundary — well south of the statue and of the access road, which sits roughly a quarter mile north of the border.
“Access to the shrine will not be affected,” he wrote, “as all attendees enter from the U.S. side.”
Cross-border support
The dioceses’ call to action arrives alongside broader Catholic push for action in support of immigrants. On Friday, Archbishop John C. Wester of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe will join bishops from El Paso, Tucson and Phoenix in Nogales, Ariz., for an evening Mass, rosary and procession across the border into Nogales, Mexico.
Wester described the event as aligned with the Cristo Rey pilgrimage — and with Pope Leo, who plans to spend July 4 on Lampedusa, a small Sicilian island known as a waypoint for migrants making the deadly crossing from North Africa.
“We see it as an opportunity to give witness to what our teachings are,” Wester said by phone as he traveled to Arizona on Thursday. “I know it’ll be perceived as political, but that’s not our intent. We want to pray for them and raise awareness of the importance of immigrants in our country.”
The church is not calling for open borders, he said — but opposes the wall itself and its policy implications.
“According to our church teaching, we don’t agree with it,” he said, arguing a wall doesn’t address root causes of migration and pushes people into danger.
By choosing a wall over “comprehensive immigration reform,” he said, the administration advances a narrative the church rejects: that the nation must be kept safe from immigrants.
“The administration would have us think that immigrants are all murderers and felons. That’s just not true,” he said. “What’s really made our country great is immigrants.”
