Decrying the federal government’s policy of mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, which he described as a “governmental assault designed to produce fear and terror among millions of men and women,” Washington Cardinal Robert W. McElroy at a Sept. 28 Mass said Jesus’s Parable of the Good Samaritan should guide Catholics’ response in standing in solidarity with those immigrants, regarding them as neighbors just as the Samaritan did to the robbery victim needing help.
In his homily at a Mass at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle marking the 111th World Day of Migrants and Refugees, Cardinal McElroy said the parable in that day’s gospel reading raises a central question for Catholics to face as citizens and believers, regarding “whether 10 million men and women and children and families who have lived alongside us for decades should face terror and expulsion: Are they our neighbors?”
“In the Gospel today, Jesus demands that the central perspective we must bring to understanding the moral legitimacy of the campaign of fear and deportation being waged in our country today springs from the bonds of community that have come to tie us together as neighbors with the undocumented, not the question of whether sometime in the past individuals broke a law by entering or remaining in the United States,” Cardinal McElroy said.
Washington’s archbishop then emphasized, “It is this perspective that must form our stance and action as people of faith. As a Church we must console and peacefully stand in solidarity with the undocumented men and women whose lives are being upended by the government’s campaign of fear and terror.”
The Mass commemorating the World Day of Migrants and Refugees and also the Jubilee of Migrants called by the late Pope Francis as part of the Catholic Church’s observation of a jubilee year followed a reflection procession through the streets of Washington sponsored by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington and Jesuit Refugee Service/USA. That procession, which began at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart and concluded at the cathedral, included seven stops along the route where parishioners, migrants, clergy, religious and community members and leaders gave reflections on the theme, “Migrants, Missionaries of Hope.”
As the Mass opened, Msgr. W. Ronald Jameson, the rector of St. Matthew’s Cathedral, welcomed the large congregation, which he noted included ambassadors from different nations and representatives of many organizations.
“In these times of uncertainty and hardship for migrants and refugees in the world, we stand united with our Holy Father and the Church across the globe gathering in faith and solidarity to honor their journey and their resilience,” Msgr. Jameson said.
Cardinal McElroy in his opening remarks at the Mass said, “As we are joined together in prayer this day, here in this church, we also remember those who are not here today because they are in fear, those in our undocumented communities who go through their lives now fearful they cannot walk the streets in freedom or in safety or in peace. Let us begin by remembering them in silent prayer and knowing they are here with us.”
The concelebrants at the Mass included Bishop Juan Esposito and Bishop Evelio Menjivar, who both serve as auxiliary bishops of Washington, and about 40 archdiocesan and religious order priests.
Opening his homily, Cardinal McElroy noted that for more than a century, the Mass for the World Day of Migrants has been celebrated “to honor and support migrants and refugees who have come to our nation as part of that stream of men and women from every land who have built up the United States into a great nation.”
But he said this year’s Mass was being held as “we are confronting – both as a nation and as a Church – an unprecedented assault upon millions of immigrant men and women and families in our midst.”
“Our first obligation as a Church is to embrace in a sustained, unwavering, prophetic and compassionate way the immigrants who are suffering so deeply because of the oppression they are facing,” the cardinal said.
Cardinal McElroy noted how undocumented immigrants in the Archdiocese of Washington and throughout the country have been impacted by the mass deportation policy. “Our Catholic community in Washington has witnessed many people of deep faith, integrity and compassion who have been swept up and deported in the crackdown which has been unleashed upon our nation,” he said.
The cardinal thanked parishes, priests and faith leaders in the community for their outreach in response to the crisis, saying “a profound ministry of consolation, justice and support must be the hallmark of our spiritual and pastoral care at this moment.”
Washington’s archbishop also noted the contributions that undocumented immigrants in the archdiocese are making to this community and this country, saying, “Your daily witness of faith and family, hard work and sacrifice, compassion and love is a profound reflection of the deepest virtues of our faith and the most noble aspirations of our nation.”
Cardinal McElroy said the undocumented immigrants offer a witness of hope. “In these days of deep suffering you give us an example of transforming hope and a resiliency that is founded upon the Gospel of Jesus Christ, whose cross symbolizes at its core suffering amidst injustice, and the recognition that in our moments of deepest hardship, our God stands with us.”
Describing the human impact of the mass deportation policy, the cardinal said, “This assault seeks to make life unbearable for undocumented immigrants. It is willing to tear families apart, separating grieving mothers from their children, and fathers from the sons and daughters who are the center of their lives. It embraces as collateral damage the horrific emotional suffering that is being thrust on children who were born here, but now face the terrible choice of losing their parents or leaving the only country they have ever known.”
Catholic social teaching, he said, states that nations have the right to control their own borders and provide security, and he added that “efforts to secure our borders and deport those undocumented immigrants convicted of serious crimes constitute legitimate national goals.”
But he added that the scope of the government’s actions, in the archdiocese and across the country, are different.
“For our government is engaged in – by its own admission and by the tumultuous enforcement actions it has launched – a comprehensive campaign to uproot millions of families and hard-working men and women who have come to our country seeking a better life that includes contributing to building up the most important elements of our culture and society. This campaign relies on fear at its core,” Cardinal McElroy said.
Washington’s archbishop noted that the government’s rationale and stated moral foundation for “undertaking such a comprehensive campaign of fear, of uprooting ten million people from their homes and expelling them from our country… is simple and determinative: they broke a law when they entered or chose to stay in the United States.”
But the Parable of the Good Samaritan offers a different lens for looking at the undocumented men and women and children facing expulsion in the mass deportation policy, the cardinal said.
Cardinal McElroy emphasized that “the most striking element of the parable is that the Samaritan was willing to reject the norms of society which said that because of his birth and status he had no obligation to the victim, who was a Jew. The piercing insight and glory of the Samaritan was that he rejected the narrowness and myopia of the law to understand that the victim he was passing by was truly his neighbor and that both God and the moral law obligated him to treat him as neighbor.”
The cardinal then offered examples for how people “as believers and citizens,” should ask themselves whether the undocumented men and women in their midst are their neighbors.
“Is the mother who sacrifices in every dimension of her life to nurture children who will live rightly, productively and caringly our neighbor? Is the man being deported despite the fact that he has three sons who serve in the Marines because of the values he taught them our neighbor? Is the woman who works to provide home care for our sick and elderly parents our neighbor? Is the young adult who came here as a child and loves this nation as the only country he has ever known our neighbor? Is the undocumented woman who contributes tirelessly to our parish, caring for the church, leading the daily rosary our neighbor?” he asked.
Just as the priest and the Levite in the parable passed by the suffering man, the cardinal said that people today “so often choose to pass on by – sometimes out of indifference, sometimes out of fear, sometimes out of a general reluctance to be involved.”
But the perspective of the Good Samaritan in Jesus’s parable offers a guide for people of faith today, to offer solidarity and support to undocumented immigrants “at this moment of historic and deliberate suffering being visited upon people living truly good lives that are a credit to our society,” Cardinal McElroy said, adding, “As citizens, we must not be silent as this profound injustice is carried out in our name.”
The cardinal underscored that Jesus in the parable of the Good Samaritan rejected indifference, fear and reluctance, and his question about which one – the Samaritan, the priest or the Levite – was a neighbor to the robber’s victim, is also a question for people today, who in considering the plight of the nation’s undocumented immigrants, must ask, “Are they our neighbors?,” and in turn, will they be neighbors to them?
Concluding his homily, Cardinal McElroy said, “In understanding and facing the oppression of undocumented men and women in our midst, we have only one answer: ‘I was, Lord, because I saw in them your face.’”
The congregation and concelebrating priests and bishops gave the cardinal a long standing ovation after the homily.
The prayers of the faithful included prayers read in English, Spanish, Creole, American Sign Language, Ukrainian and Tagalog.
A man prayed in English “for our Church, may we be witnesses of God’s love by welcoming the stranger and providing for the needy, seeing in them Christ himself.”
A woman prayed in Ukrainian “for those forced from their homes by situations of conflict, persecution, natural disaster and dire poverty, may they receive, by God’s grace, the possibility of a dignified and fulfilling life.”
During the consecration, Cardinal McElroy was flanked at the altar by Bishop Esposito, an immigrant from Argentina, and Bishop Menjivar, an immigrant from El Salvador.
Before the closing prayer, the cardinal noted that many of the priests and parish leaders at the Mass were likewise immigrants from other countries.
Noting how moments earlier they had all prayed the Our Father together, Cardinal McElroy said, “All of us are on this journey of life on earth, this pilgrimage toward God, and it is God’s grace in that pilgrimage that brings us together to support one another, to stand in solidarity particularly in times of hardship and struggle, and lift each other up and carry each other through in the grace of our God.”
Later while Cardinal McElroy processed from the altar as the closing hymn was being sung, the congregation gave him another long ovation.
After the Mass, Oscar Ramos – a parishioner of the Shrine of the Sacred Heart who had brought up the offertory gifts with his wife Ludis and their sons Oscar Jr., who is 13, and Jaziel who is 6 – said the cardinal’s homily “was amazing. It was very comforting for us.”
Oscar Ramos, an immigrant from Honduras who works in construction, added, “We have to love each other, no matter if you are an immigrant or not. As a neighbor, you have to love each other, as Jesus said.”
In another interview after the Mass, Megan Do – a senior in the Conway School of Nursing at The Catholic University of America – said, “It was so beautiful to come together as a community to support migrants.”
Her grandparents immigrated to the United States after the Vietnam War with their eight children to start a new life with their family.
“When I see everything going on now, I think a lot about my family and my grandparents, and my heart really feels for immigrants right now,” she said.
Do, who is participating in the nursing school’s Certificate in Spanish for Health Care Program, is considering a career in community health nursing. She added, “I think the most important thing now is to remember everyone is a child of God, no matter where you’re from.”
Also after the Mass, Kelly Ryan, the president of Jesuit Refugee Services/USA which cosponsored the reflection procession for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees, said that Cardinal McElroy in his homily touched on key points including “the right of a country to have sovereign borders, and the duty of Catholics to live out the Parable of the Good Samaritan.”
Ryan noted the "beautiful solidarity" demonstrated by the large number of participating priests. She believes Catholics in the archdiocese are looking for things to do to express solidarity with immigrants, “and a spiritual procession and a Mass is a perfect way to show that’s important to you as a person (and that it’s important) to our Church.”
Earlier that afternoon as he walked with hundreds of people including families with children, college students and senior citizens from different backgrounds in the reflection procession from the Shrine of the Sacred Heart to St. Matthew’s Cathedral, Bishop Menjivar said, “My hope is that through our prayers, hearts will be softened, and also that those (undocumented immigrants) who are afraid and fearful sometimes to the point of desperation, will know they are not alone. A lot of people walk with them, acknowledging their dignity… God is with us, and many people of goodwill are with us.”
Text of Cardinal McElroy’s homily for World Day of Migrants and Refugees
