Editorial

Papal Prayers on the Border

Posted

Pope Francis will make his first visit to Mexico later this month, and it’s a trip that promises to resonate across the Rio Grande, the storied U.S.-Mexico border to the north.

That will happen quite literally in El Paso, Texas, where 50,000 people will gather at a stadium Feb. 17 for a live telecast of the outdoor Mass in neighboring Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, that caps the pope’s five-day trip.

The papal blessing bestowed on the thousands of Mexican faithful at the Juarez Mass will extend to the Americans watching at the Sun Bowl stadium, an event organized by the El Paso Diocese under the leadership of Bishop Mark Seitz, who called the blessing a highlight of the program.

More broadly and symbolically powerful will be what happens before the Mass begins, when Francis is expected to walk to the edge of the Rio Grande to kneel and pray for the more than 6,000 Mexican and Central American migrants who died trying to cross it in the last 15 years.

Praying with him just 65 feet away on the El Paso side of the border will be a group of a few hundred migrants, some of them undocumented women and children from Central America.

“We hope that in a special way, Pope Francis’ visit to this region will give voice to these often voiceless people,” said Bishop Seitz, announcing the agenda.

He said the El Paso Diocese, along with neighboring border dioceses of Las Cruces, N.M., and Juarez in Mexico, also hopes the papal visit “will facilitate a much-needed national dialogue that will help unite our own country around a compassionate response to the poor in our midst.”

That’s something we’re hoping for, too, in the strongest possible way.

The pope’s Feb. 12-17 trip to Mexico comes at a time of heightened actions and rhetoric aimed at Mexican and Central American immigrants from both sides of our political spectrum.

Many of President Barack Obama’s fellow Democrats, for example, are among the most vocal critics of the administration’s deportation raids targeting Central American immigrants and refugees fleeing gang violence in their own countries. In early January, as the president was preparing his State of the Union address, dozens of Democrats blasted a series of raids over the New Year’s weekend that took 121 adults and children into custody.

On the Republican presidential campaign trail, we’ve already heard candidates in primary races running on themes of even more deportations in the future and pledges to build walls to keep the immigrants out. Add that to “immigration-reform shaming”—with candidates lambasting others for backing immigration reform in the past—and we’ve got a toxic mix.

As he did when he addressed a joint session of Congress on his U.S. visit in September, we expect that Pope Francis will talk about poverty and immigration in Mexico and the United States on the upcoming trip.

It’s a message that needs to be delivered again, and it’s why we join Bishop Seitz in his comment: “We have many hopes for what this visit will accomplish.”

And in a nod to our own archdiocese and others on the East Coast, we also join the bishop in hoping that Pope Francis’ visit to the border region, “like his recent visit to New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., will be a great moment for the Catholic Church to showcase the beauty and depth of our faith.”