On June 20, designated as World Refugee Day by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, an interreligious group of clergy entered the federal building in San Diego, Calif., as a judge was about to hear two immigration cases. Among those present was the newly appointed Catholic bishop of San Diego, Michael Pham.

Inside the courthouse were Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents waiting to detain the migrants once their cases were heard.

As Bishop Pham walked toward the courtroom, he noticed that the masked agents “kind of scattered and went away.” Scott Reid, a member of the San Diego Organizing Project, said: “Like the story of Moses and Exodus, the Red Sea parted.”

This is exactly what Pope Leo XIV had in mind.

Michael Pham is the first U.S. bishop appointed by Pope Leo XIV. And in another first, Pham is the first person of Vietnamese descent to be made a diocesan bishop in the U.S.

Born in Da Nang, Vietnam, in 1967, Bishop Pham left the country at age 13 on a rice barge. Pursued by the communists, he was at sea for days without food or water. Dead bodies were scattered about the floor of the makeshift boat. As Pham later recalled, “I thought they were sleeping, but I came to realize they were dead.”

Accompanying his older sister and younger brother,........

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