Over 300 leaders, clergy, religious, and bishops from 20 organizations gathered last week in San Antonio to celebrate five years of Recognizing the Stranger, a West/Southwest IAF training, leadership formation, and parish organizing strategy. 

The Convocation was highlighted by a video message from Pope Francis, who offered his “closeness and support” to the IAF network and its work to organize with immigrants and with those at the margins to encourage “participation of the Christian in public life.”  

[Excerpts below]

Immigration was the urgent topic when Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller, MSpS took the stage at COPS/Metro's "A Cry for Justice and a Call to Action" assembly at Our Lady of the Lake University on June 18, 2018.  "We live in very challenging times.  Basic institutions of justice are being attacked.  People are suffering needlessly," the archbishop declared to a packed auditorium.  "This is a time of crisis.  We have to make a decision.  Do we go along with or challenge these trends?"

The assembly, which had been months in the planning, took on an air of urgency and drew a standing-room-only crowd as it  coincided with a particularly tense week in the nation's debate on immigration policy.  News had just broken of the Trump administration's policy of separating detained children from their parents -  a policy  Archbishop Gustavo strongly condemned in  his speech as "immoral," "evil," and sinful," echoing similar sentiments expressed by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops....

After [hearing a challenge by the Bishop and a DACA participant], faith communities caucused in small groups, then they answered... by pledging to collect 11,500 postcards to be mailed to Texas' congressional representatives in Washington.  Archbishop Gustavo took the symbolic  first step of signing his name on the first postcards, which will be mailed to Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn."

[Image Credit: NOWCastSA footage]

Archbishop Gustavo Urges Action on Immigration at COPS / Metro Assembly, Today's Catholic

San Antonio Archbishop Calls Separation of Families Immoral, Evil and Sinful, NOWCastSA [pdf]

How Catholics are Helping Immigrant Children Separated from their Parents, America

Catholic Bishops Across US Condemn Separation of Migrant Children, America

Archbishop Calls for Immigration Reform, Launches Campaign, News4SA