Looks like the Catholic Church has decided to relive its better days (when it was led by brave people like El Salvador's Archbishop Oscar Romero).

The Archbishop of Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony (above) has come out swinging against Arizona's illegal immigration measure calling it something the Nazis would have been proud of.

He blasted the bill as "the country's most retrogressive, mean-spirited and useless anti-immigrant law."

"American people are fair-minded and respectful. I can't imagine Arizonans now reverting to German Nazi and Russian Communist techniques whereby people are required to turn one another in to the authorities on any suspicion of documentation," Mahony wrote on his blog.

The measure would allow police to stop someone if they suspect them of being in the country illegally.

The bill does not specify what grounds the police would need but the implications are frightening.

The new measure would also require all immigrants to have their papers on them in the event they are stopped by police.

"The tragedy of the law is its totally flawed reasoning: that immigrants come to our country to rob, plunder and consume public resources. That is not only false, the premise is nonsense."