Los Angeles Times
By Cindy Carcamo
April 1, 2014
NOGALES, Ariz. — It had been years since Maria Miranda of Tucson attended Catholic Mass with her son Jorge Lopez.
On Tuesday, they finally did. But they were separated by the U.S.-Mexico border fence in southern Arizona.
"I'm
just a couple of bars, a couple steps away from her," the 35-year-old
said he told himself. "There's a fence, but it's the same ground."
At
one point, Lopez even forgot that he was on the Mexican side. He forgot
about how immigration officials, he says, denied him an extension on
his green card. He even
forgot about how his illegal status finally caught up with him at work
three years ago and he was deported.
Lopez
was one of about 300 people who gathered at the border fence in Nogales
to attend a transnational Mass led by Cardinal Seán O'Malley of Boston
and bishops from across
the West and Southwest, including Auxiliary Bishop Eusebio Elizondo of
Seattle; Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas of Tucson; Bishop Mark Seitz of El
Paso; and Bishop Oscar Cantu of Las Cruces, N.M.
The
Mass to celebrate the lives of those who have died crossing the
U.S.-Mexico border is an attempt by the Catholic Church to call on
President Obama to use his executive
powers to limit deportations of people who are in the country
illegally.
Obama
has come under fire from immigrant rights activists who have nicknamed
him the "deporter in chief" in reference to the high volume of
deportations under his administration,
although federal statistics now show that expulsions of people who are
settled and working in the U.S. have fallen steadily since his first
year in office, and are down more than 40% since 2009.
The
move by the bishops also comes at a time when an overhaul of U.S.
immigration policy is at a standstill in Congress, despite thousands of
people crossing the border
into the U.S. only to die trying to get through Arizona's brutal
Sonoran desert.
The
dramatic backdrop for Tuesday's outdoor Mass was the imposing border
fence, which became the center of attention when O'Malley and the other
bishops gave Communion
to people gathered on the Mexican side, as they reached through the
gaps in the barrier's steel slats.
In
the last few years, the Catholic Church has become increasingly vocal
about immigrant rights — preaching from the pulpit about immigration
reform as an "ethical and
moral imperative."
Late
last month, Elizondo, who is chairman of the U.S. Conference of
Catholic Bishops' Committee on Migration, wrote to Department of
Homeland Security officials asking
them to limit deportations.
O'Malley,
who took a weeklong tour of the southern Arizona border with several
bishops from the Southwest, said he was inspired and emboldened by Pope
Francis, who visited
Lampedusa, Italy, last year to pray for people who died trying to
migrate to Europe by boat.
During
Tuesday's bilingual Mass, O'Malley and the bishops laid a wreath at the
border wall in Nogales and called for Catholics to remember those who
had died.
"We
know the border is lined with unmarked graves," O'Malley said. "They
call them illegal aliens. We are here to say they are not forgotten.
They are our neighbors. Our
brothers. Our sisters.… You cannot love God without loving your
neighbor."
There
have been other Masses on the U.S.-Mexico border, but this is the first
that drew O'Malley and members of the bishops' committee on migration
in addition to the
border bishops.
The
Catholic Church is one of many religious organizations that have taken a
more aggressive stance on immigration reform. Protestant evangelicals,
Jewish leaders and
some Mormons have also called for an immigration overhaul, framing such
action as a moral issue.
However,
there still may be a disconnect from the pulpit to the flock, some
experts suggest. For instance, a 2010 survey by the Pew Research Center
revealed that only
7% of U.S. adults said their religious beliefs were the biggest
influence on their thinking regarding immigration. It was far more
common for people to cite their personal experience, education or what
they have seen or read in the media as the most important
influence.
When
asked about Catholic parishioners' possible disengagement on
immigration, O'Malley said that was why the religious leaders were doing
such things as holding Mass
along the U.S.-Mexico border." The
bishops are here to call attention to this ethical problem," said
O'Malley, who added that immigration reform was "being held hostage" by
politicians.
On
Tuesday, the border fence towered above the scene, casting a shadow on
those attending Mass on the U.S. side. Franklin Alexander Ordoñez, 28,
from Honduras, who described
himself as a Catholic, clung to the fence on the Mexican side.
"This
makes me very happy. It's a great help for us," he said. Ordoñez, who
said he had been living in a migrant shelter this week until he could
make an illegal crossing,
said the Mass would give him the strength to move forward in his
journey and flee the violence in his home country.
A
few steps away, Lopez spoke with his mother, Miranda, through the
fence. Miranda, who became a naturalized U.S. citizen last month, said
she was hopeful that she would
be able to bring her son back to Tucson soon.
Lopez, who came to the U.S. legally when he was 6, said he had never heard a Mass of this kind.
"It
makes me feel like I'm still part of the U.S.," he told his mother
through the fence. "I'm not Mexican. I feel like an American citizen."
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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