Christmas in Massachusetts has taken another bizarre turn as St. Susanna, a Catholic church in the comfortable Boston suburb of Dedham, decided that what Americans really need this holiday season is not the Holy Family—but a political lecture. Their annual Nativity scene now features an empty manger marked with a sign declaring “ICE was here,” complete with contact information for an immigration watchdog group. Baby Jesus? Missing. Mary and Joseph? Vanished. The politics, however, are front and center.
The church’s pastor, Father Stephen Josoma, insists this is all high-minded “religious art.” According to him, the parish’s peace and justice committee tries each year to ask, “what would it be like if Christ was born into the context of the world today, what would he be facing?”
In other words, he’s recasting the Nativity as a modern-day political protest. Again.
But not everyone is buying the spin. C.J. Doyle, the executive director of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, received a distressed call from a parishioner horrified by the stunt. Doyle didn’t mince words. “I think it’s very offensive,” he said. “[Josoma] is politicizing Christmas, he’s exploiting and trivializing the Holy Family, and he’s using his Catholic parish as a platform to promote his left-winged ideology.”
And if you think this is a one-off, think again. Father Josoma has been running headline-grabbing Nativity “reinterpretations” for about a decade. Gun control displays, climate change warnings, immigration protests—you name it. In 2018, he even placed baby Jesus in a cage and walled off the Magi, a clear jab at the southern border crisis.
Doyle isn’t impressed. “This is a case of a dissident priest who has a long history of these kinds of ‘crackpot’ publicity stunts aimed at political activism,” he said. “This has nothing to do with the birth of our Savior and everything to do with ventilating [Josoma’s] own political projects.”
Josoma, for his part, sounds proud of the disruption, insisting the goal is to stir emotions. “It’s supposed to affect people deeply, it’s supposed to move people, it’s supposed to change people,” he told Fox News Digital. If people are upset, he added, “it’s maybe good to take a look at that.”
The priest claims the displays grow out of the parish’s work assisting refugees since 2017. Doyle agrees Josoma has long blurred politics and faith—but says the real problem lies higher up. “The archdiocese has tolerated this behavior in the past,” he argued. “They should tell him to stop, pure and simple.”
Doyle even cited a recent statement from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops: “We pray for an end to dehumanizing rhetoric and violence, whether directed at immigrants or at law enforcement.” So is St. Susanna’s display dehumanizing to law enforcement? Doyle didn’t hesitate: “Of course it is.”
And this isn’t the only church turning Christmas into campaign season. In Illinois, another congregation showcased a manger with baby Jesus zip-tied and Mary and Joseph wearing gas masks. The church claimed the scene “reimagines the nativity as a scene of forced family separation.”
Jillian Westerfield of Lake Street Church of Evanston defended the provocative tableau, insisting the imagery speaks to the times. The church wrote on Facebook, “This installation is not subtle because the crisis it addresses is not abstract… The Holy Family were refugees… we hope to restore its radical edge, and to ask what it means to celebrate the birth of a refugee child while turning away those who follow in that child’s footsteps.”
Westerfield added, “We’re not coming out in favor or against any political party… No one is doing what we think needs to be done for the people of Illinois and for the American people.”
Back in Dedham, Father Josoma claims most feedback has been positive—aside from one angry passerby who allegedly called him a “murderer.” Still, he stands by the politics-meets-Christmas approach. “The church has a right to speak out,” he said. “And we should be talking about issues. We’re supposed to take care of people.”
The Archdiocese of Boston, repeatedly criticized for allowing Father Josoma’s theatrics, has so far stayed silent, not responding to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
