Mar 25, The Tablet

Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso, the chairman of the US Catholic Bishops Conference’s Committee on Migration, delivered strong words and a warning on Monday to the administration of President Donald Trump over its escalating crackdown against immigrants and asylum seekers along the country’s southern border and nationwide.

In a sermon delivered to a congregation of nearly 500, as well as scores of diocesan clergy and members of religious orders, a dozen US and Canadian bishops and a Vatican cardinal, Bishop Seitz criticised those whose actions in this world are motivated by the desire for wealth or empire as “idolatry of the worst sort”.

He then turned his argument to the Trump administration’s so-called “hardening” of the US-Mexico border, involving the deployment of US Army troops and the increased presence of armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents throughout the borderlands region, calling it “simply empire masquerading in the guise of security for the benefit of a select few”.

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Mar 24, Independent Catholic News

El Paso, Texas – The protective figure of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Patroness of the Americas, looms large above the fear-filled west Texas city of El Paso these days. And well she should.

The massive mosaic of the Mother of God stands four stories tall, attached to a soon-to-be opened affordable housing bloc named ‘Nuestra Senora’ (Our Lady), just five minutes from the international border with Mexico.

A stone’s throw away is the imposing red-brick structure of the El Paso’s St Patrick’s Cathedral. It’s early morning, the third Sunday of Lent and less than 24 hours until the Feast Day of Saint Oscar Romero, the slain Archbishop of San Salvador who, for his staunch defence of human rights and the dignity of the poor, was martyred by an assassin’s bullet while saying Mass on March 24, 1980.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE at Independent Catholic News …