Dear People of Saint Anne,
From the time of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, the first illegal immigrants of the Bible, to the era of our own great grandparents, to this time in history, good people are often forced to flee their homeland and to seek a new place of refuge.
Today, we have hundreds, perhaps thousands of Central Americans and Mexicans seeking refuge by crossing our southern border from Mexico. Most are good people fleeing poverty as well as violence of gangs and cartels. Yet they are meeting strong resistance, the separation of children and adults in their families and long delays when they try to enter the United States legally.
What Central Americans and Mexicans are facing today – unfortunately is not new. We may be a nation of immigrants, but we have often not been a nation welcoming of immigrants.
To say this needs to change is simplistic. But welcoming the stranger is the moral thing to do. As Catholic Christians, Cardinal Blase Cupich, following the lead of Pope Francis, reminds us with his recent statement of last week, that we are called to read the sign of the times and respond to them in the light of our faith and compassion as followers of Christ.
In the name of the Holy Family,
Father Bernie Pietrzak