 World & Nation

At historic migration summit, bishops commit to work toward ‘Church without borders’

BY RHINA GUIDOS 

Catholic News Service

MUNDELEIN, Ill. • After hearing the story of a Salvadoran immigrant and her plight to leave her home country, bishops from the U.S., Central America and Mexico meeting in Mundelein June 2 turned to a camera facing a woman identified as Maria Antonia.

Even though she was thousands of miles away, in Irving, Texas, they gave her a blessing via Zoom.

“Our wish is that your family find stability and you’ll find peace and continue to experience God’s consolation,” said Bishop Oswaldo Escobar Aguilar of her home country.

The Bishop of the Diocese of Chalatenango, El Salvador, led a dozen other brother bishops in the blessing as they saw through her story the reality of the complexities they discussed June 1 and 2: violence, displacement, looking for safety and a chance to start again.

On the final day of a historic meeting of bishops and international Catholic organizations gathered at Mundelein Seminary outside of Chicago, they discussed the challenges the Church faces even while trying to get Catholics to understand Church teaching on migrants such as Maria Antonia.

“We need to evangelize our own, we really do,” said Don Kerwin, executive director of the Center for Migration Studies in New York. “Really, the whole Church is not with us and we should be honest about that. We don’t need messaging as much as we need Catholics to be in communion with migrants, as many of you have talked about.

“And we need Catholics to be Catholics. . . . The Church really has a beautiful vision for gathering God’s children, a vision of communion, a vision of diversity, and it works.”

It was a sentiment shared by other participants, including Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley in the Diocese of Brownsville, Texas.

Despite gaining great respect for her work with migrants, Sister Pimentel, a Missionary of Jesus, said she has seen her fair share of Catholics who don’t like the welcome she’s giving migrants, but she feels compelled to carry out the message of the Gospel by helping them.

She said the Church sees two types of Catholics: “Those wanting us to tell them . . . how to help (migrants),” and those who are “politicized, who believe that what we’re doing at the border is wrong.”

Even with the opposition, “it is our job to speak up,” she said on the last day of the meeting organized at the urging of U.S. bishops to address ways the Church will need to organize itself to help migrants since their numbers likely will increase as a result of the pandemic, climate change and political destabilization in Central America.

In the closing Mass June 2, the

 “We need Catholics to be in communion with migrants.”

Bishops from the U.S., Central America and Mexico face the camera at the chapel of Mundelein Seminary outside of Chicago June 2 to bless a Salvadoran woman via Zoom who shared her story of immigration. Along with Vatican representatives and Catholic organizations, the prelates participated in an emergency session June 1 and 2 to set forth the U.S. Church’s response to immigration as well as to seek greater collaboration with bishops from countries where some migrants are coming from. CNS photo/Rhina Guidos

Bishop Guido Charbonneau of Honduras looks at notes written by children in detention camps during a break June 1, at Mundelein Seminary outside of Chicago. “Dear God, I ask you that you help me get out of here and that you take care of my mom,” read one note written in Spanish, which was collected by Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso, Texas, and shared with those attending the

summit. CNS photo/Rhina Guidos

Tiananmen anniversary prompts renewed calls to address human rights abuses

BY CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE

Hong Kong is the front line of China’s assault on freedom around the world –

WASHINGTON • The Chinese because it is.” government in Beijing again banned Police said they had to cancel the an annual candlelight vigil to honor event this year and last year because of the victims of the Tiananmen Square social distancing rules put in place to People at Victoria Park in Hong Kong hold

Massacre because the Communist Party control the spread of COVID-19. candles June 4, during the 32nd anniversary

“cannot tolerate the truth of its actions The protesters killed in Tiananmen of the crackdown on pro-democracy demin 1989 being recognized anywhere,” said Square in mainland China in 1989 used onstrators in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in the head of the Committee for Freedom to be remembered in Hong Kong with 1989. CNS photo/Lam Yik, Reuters in Hong Kong. an annual candlelight vigil in the city’s

The committee was recently founded expansive Victoria Park, attended by discussions of the events of June 4 have MarketplaceThe Monitor The place to find the services you’re looking for! to defend religious freedom and other basic human rights in Hong Kong. “The true intent of the ban is made crowds as big as 130,000, all holding flickering candles. Seven Catholic churches scheduled achieved nothing,” said Bork. “There must be political and economic consequences imposed on China’s clear by the vindictive prosecution and Masses for June 4 at the time the vigils government for mounting repression in imprisonment of Hong Kong democrats would normally occur. Hong Kong,” she added. Marketplace The Monitor The place to find the services you’re looking for! MarketplaceThe Monitor The place to find the services you’re looking for! for honoring the victims of June 4, 1989, last year,” committee president Ellen Bork said in a June 3 statement. “The world’s democracies must respond as if “Annual calls by democratic governments for an official Chinese accounting of the dead and an end to punishment of Chinese citizens for even private At a June 4 event in Washington sponsored by the Chinese Democracy and Human Rights Alliance, the co-chair Continued on 60

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