Addressing Georgetown University graduates in 2024, Menjivar-Ayala said, “In 1990, I arrived in Los Angeles, California with only a change of clothes in a backpack, but full of dreams.”
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Pope Leo XIV’s pick to be West Virginia’s new bishop notably came to the United States as a teenager illegally. Evelio Menjivar-Ayala is originally from El Salvador.
The Pope’s choice to be West Virginia’s only bishop was first reported by journalist Christopher Hale, who wrote that Menjivar-Ayala attempted multiple times to enter the United States illegally, finally being successful in 1990, when he was smuggled across the border in the truck of a car into California.
“It’s a remarkable choice in a state that is over 90% white and voted for President Trump by 42 points,” Hale wrote.
Addressing Georgetown University graduates in 2024, Menjivar-Ayala said, “In 1990, I arrived in Los Angeles, California with only a change of clothes in a backpack, but full of dreams. As most immigrants do, I did any kind of job I could get: receptionist, construction, janitorial work, painting, youth ministry. Meanwhile, I took English classes at night, and I also studied for the high school equivalency degree,” per the Catholic Standard.
He was ordained as a priest for the The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington in 2004 and ordained as a bishop for Washington in 2023. He arrived in the US at the age of 18 and later applied for asylum and gained a work permit and green card, before becoming a US citizen in 2006.
The appointment of Menjivar-Ayala as the bishop of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston comes after Pope Leo accepted the resignation of Bishop Mark Brennan.