Louisville, Kentucky.- Government officials would infringe on religious freedom if they restricted the Catholic Church’s work serving migrants along the US-Mexico border, according to a prominent US bishop.
Archbishop Timothy Broglio, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), addressed the issue this week in Louisville, Kentucky, during a USCCB meeting where immigration-related issues such as long wait to obtain visas for religious workers. He referenced recent attacks by government officials against religious work on the border, such as the Texas attorney general’s attempts to shut down a Catholic nonprofit that has run a network of migrant shelters for decades.
“Obviously we want to respect the law, but if that freedom is restricted, then yes, our religious freedom is being restricted, because we cannot put the precepts of the Gospel into practice,” Broglio said during a press conference on Thursday.
Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso, Texas, who chairs the USCCB committee on migration, reiterated that concern: “We are very concerned about our ability to continue to have the freedom to serve you.”
Leaders of numerous religious organizations have long shouldered the brunt of care for tens of thousands of migrants on both sides of the border.
American bishops who oversee dioceses along the border are trying to respect both the Gospel and the law, Broglio said. But he is cautious about the possibility that election-year politics will paralyze any progress toward solving immigration problems.
“We cannot abandon our efforts to proclaim the Gospel from the rooftops and see if we can influence the rulers to at least improve conditions in the countries of origin, so that emigration is not seen as a vital necessity,” Broglio said in his keynote speech at the conference.
He cited government repression against the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which has forced many clerics to flee the country.
Speaking at Friday’s meeting, Seitz noted the prolonged political stalemate in Congress over immigration reform.
He announced a new educational program on how Catholic social teachings are linked to care for migrants: This is a counterweight to the misrepresentation and misinformation on immigration issues that Catholics are hearing elsewhere. Catholics and Christian voters generally are divided over approaches to the migration crisis.
“This hostility toward Christian charity has even gone so far as to accuse Catholic ministries engaged in serving migrants and refugees of facilitating the scourge of human trafficking,” Seitz said. “However, many of those same entities actively work with law enforcement to identify and counter such criminal activity, and to assist those who have been victims of it.”
Seitz updated the bishops on the long waits to obtain and renew visas for religious workers, which are affecting many priests in the United States. Along with long waits for permanent residency, he said the situation “is simply not sustainable for our ministries and is especially devastating for parishes that will be left without a pastor when he is forced to leave the country at the end of his visa ( of religious worker).
This is already happening in some dioceses, he said.
“It is important to emphasize that we are not alone in this sense. Our brothers and sisters from other traditions are dealing with the same realities, unsure of how to plan for the future,” Seitz said.
After meeting with the White House and the departments of Homeland Security and State, an upcoming regulation is expected to help alleviate the visa wait time for religious workers, he said. Seitz urged the bishops to continue pushing their congressional delegations for reforms, adding that “our collective voice is critical at this time.”
President Joe Biden’s recent directive seeking to severely restrict asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border has created more unknowns for migrants and those who care for them, Seitz said.
“Many people expected the border gate to close as if you could turn the key and that would be it when the executive order went into effect. It hasn’t been like that,” Seitz said at Thursday’s press conference.
In his diocese, about 375 migrants who had been processed by the United States Border Patrol were released into the care of Catholic shelters on Thursday alone, said the religious, who maintains a waiting attitude before determining how the new order executive will affect his work on the border.
“One of our big concerns is that if a lot of people — virtually everyone — are returned, then where do they go?” Seitz said. ”What happens to the few options they have on the Mexican side of the border? And those are things we try to be very attentive to.”
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