Apr 8th, U.S. Catholic magazine
Jesus makes it clear: the church has a special responsibility to serve the poor and the stranger—even if this leads to persecution.
“I fully expect the church to be persecuted,” says Bishop of El Paso Mark J. Seitz. Seitz has just spoken out strongly against the anti-immigrant policies of U.S. President Donald Trump in a sermon following a march through downtown El Paso in defense of immigrants and refugees on March 24. The occasion was the feast day and 45th anniversary of the martyrdom of St. Óscar Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador who, in 1980, was killed by an assassin’s bullet while saying Mass because of his outspoken defense of the poor and vulnerable.
Before nearly 500 worshipers at an evening vigil in the Jesuit mission church of the Sacred Heart, just blocks from the U.S. border with Mexico, Bishop Seitz, who also serves as president of the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference’s Committee on Migration, called out the Trump administration’s militarization of the U.S. southern border as “simply empire masquerading as security in pursuit of benefits for a select few” and demanded the administration: “Stop the asylum ban! Stop the deportations!”
In a diocese directly impacted by the arrival of thousands of immigrants and asylum seekers from south of the border and still shaken by the 2019 mass shooting at an El Paso Wal-Mart store, in which a 21-year-old white supremacist obsessed by the Hispanic “invasion” of America gunned down 23 innocent people, journalist Michael Tangeman sat down with Bishop Seitz to ask about his pastoral work along the U.S. border, his opposition to the Trump administration’s immigration policies, and how U.S. Catholics should be responding to injustices inflicted on the poorest in society, including migrants and refugees.
michaeltangeman.com 