“Asylum on the border is pretty much impossible,” a legal advocate with the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, said. “Covid is being used as an excuse to close the border.”

The president described Barrett as “one of the nation’s most gifted legal minds” to the court and praised her for her loyalty to the Constitution.

Cardinal Michael Czerny, undersecretary of the Migrants and Refugees Section of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, told the conference Sept. 24 that the world had made great progress in responding to HIV.

Republicans were expecting President Donald Trump to announce Saturday that he is nominating Judge Barrett to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Pope Francis insisted that addressing the pandemic and building a more just and equitable world involves looking at every aspect of national and international life.

"There is no question that our nation's original sin of racism continues to destroy and harm the lives of persons of color and that racism extends through so many systems of our society ... educational, economic, religious, housing, criminal justice, voting and employment," Archbishop Kurtz said.