Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Mothers of the Disappeared Migrants Plead for Help

October 28, 2021

Mothers of Disappeared Migrants Plead for Help
~ by Rhina Guidos, Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON – A group of women looking for sons and daughters who were never heard from again after migrating to the U.S. traveled in mid-to late October throughout the country to plead for better immigration laws.

Caravan of Mothers of the Disappeared, a project backed by Pax Christi USA and the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, helped spotlight the plight of the group of women, who made a stop in Washington on October 19 to meet with members of Congress.

On October 20, the mothers, often only giving their first names, participated in an online event and talked about their family members, how and why their sons and daughters left their home countries, their last whereabouts, and the last time they spoke to them. They also shared how they had dropped off samples of their DNA with authorities at the border in hopes of one day finding out what happened to them.

Many of the stories mirrored the one told by Aracely, a mother from El Salvador,

last heard from her son, Edwin Alexander Colindres, more than nine years ago. He had set off for the U.S. to find work. He was in communication with his mother through part of the journey north, then she never heard from him again.

A woman named Bertila said she found her son, “but not the way I had hoped. …I never expected to find him among the dead,” she said. He was kidnapped by drug cartels in Tamaulipas, Mexico, and his remains were later identified in a mass grave.

“I’m here to support the mothers,” she said. “All along the border, there are thousands and thousands of remains. I had to fight for years for the remains of my son. I asked everyone for help, but no one wants to help the poor.”

Like many of the other mothers, she had seen her son leave, looking for work he couldn’t find at home. She called for better paths to enter the U.S., ones that won’t put people in danger.

“We look for them because we love them,” shouted one of the women in the caravan.

“As I listened to them, the women, it’s heart-wrenching,” said Mercy Sr. Anne Marie Miller in an interview with Catholic News Service. “It touches you to hear the suffering.”

“We have to do something…use our voices as women religious,” she said, adding that organizations such as the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) have long advocated for justice in such situations. To read the entire story please click here

Refugee Crisis is one of Solidarity

October 6, 2021

~ by Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY – Countries hosting millions of refugees are not receiving adequate support, and the situation is made worse when other nations forge agreements that trap migrants and refugees often indefinitely, “at strategic points along their journey,” said a top Vatican official.

“The fact that millions of our fellow brothers and sisters remain in limbo is a crisis of solidarity, It should challenge our conscience as a family of nations to seek strategies that engage with all countries as equal partners,” said Francesca DiGiovanni, an undersecretary in the Vatican’s foreign ministry office.

spoke on October 5 as head of the Vatican delegation to the executive committee of the U.N. High Commissioner’s Program for Refugees in Geneva.

The current system in place for handling those who are forcibly displaced has been “entirely overwhelmed” and “struggles to respond adequately,” making displacement, within and across borders, “one of the most pressing challenges of our times,” she said.

Even though the 1951 Refugee Convention declares its aim is to guarantee that refugees may exercise their “fundamental rights and freedoms,” millions of refugees are unable to enjoy these rights in many regions of the world, she said.

Many nations are trying to provide “both immediate and durable solutions,” but host countries do not receive adequate support, DiGiovanni said.

“A number of countries have even increased the burden of host communities through an unsustainable strategy of externalization, avoiding direct responsibility for large, mixed flows of migrants and refugees through agreements that stop them, often indefinitely, at strategic points along their journey.”

Countries near these areas of crisis “are only as strong as the unity and effectiveness of the international community in extending financial and technical support to first responders and to local populations that are struggling to continue on with daily life,” she said.

The Vatican, she said, is calling on all countries “to adopt concrete, meaningful actions, especially in response to the increasing number of humanitarian crises.”

The Vatican also insists on protecting the “right to health of everyone, including refugees and migrants, and especially of women and children who are at particular risk in humanitarian situations, she said. To read the complete article please click here

Faith Groups Band Together to Help Haitians Camped at US-Mexico border

September 30, 2021

~ by Nuri Vallbona, Global Sisters Report

Ciudad Acuña, Mexico – Recent images of immigrants crammed under the international bridge and officers on horseback trying to grab and corral them drew outrage across the political spectrum. The threat of deportation left many migrants in limbo, too afraid to take their chances with the asylum process but stuck in Mexico without work permits to a means to support themselves.

As the number of Haitian arrivals at the border swelled, Catholic sisters, religious organizations, nonprofits and churches banded together with a common goal: provide basic services and restore human dignity.

If God has allowed these different religions, then we all need to support each other. We are all God’s children. We were all created equal, so we need to treat each other with respect,” said Sr. Ursula Herrera, a Benedictine Sister of Boerne.

On September 22, the sister joined a team of volunteers from Casa Hogar Getsemani, a Baptist orphanage in Morelos, Mexico, to pass out lemonade and more than 130 plates of hot dogs, rice, beans, tortillas and pork stew to the migrants milling around an immigration camp in Ciudad Acuña.

Throughout September, Matt Mayberry, a pastor at the Southern Baptist City Church Del Rio said he was inundated with calls from churches across the country offering to support his congregation’s efforts to feed those camped under the bridge. He estimated that volunteers handed out more than 16,000 sandwiches and snacks to immigrants and border officials until the federal government stepped into provide food.

“Our understanding of Scripture is that we were made in God’s image – all humans,” he said. “And so, regardless of our ethnicity or nationality, every human is worthy of human dignity and value. Our church and all the churches who have joined us believe the same thing.”
To read the complete article please click here

World Day of Migrants and Refugees

September 23, 2021

World Day of Migrants and Refugees
Sunday, September 26th

Towards an ever wider WE
It’s not just about migrants, it’s about not excluding anyone.
It’s about putting the last and the least in first place.

Church has been celebrating the World Day of Migrants and Refugees (WDMR) since 1914. It is always an occasion to express concern for different vulnerable people on the move; to pray for them as they face many challenges; and to increase awareness about the opportunities that migration offers.

world Every year the WDMR is the last Sunday of September; in 2021 it will be celebrated on 26 September. As the title for his annual message, the Holy Father has chosen Towards an ever wider “we”.
Dear brothers and sisters,

In the Encyclical Fratelli Tutti, I expressed a concern and a hope that remain uppermost in my thoughts: “Once this health crisis passes, our worst response would be to plunge even more deeply into feverish consumerism and new forms of egotistic self-preservation. God willing, after all this, we will think no longer in terms of ‘them’ and ‘those’, but only ‘us’” (No. 35).

For this reason, I have wished to devote the Message for this year’s World Day of Migrants and Refugees to the theme, Towards An Ever Wider “We”, in order to indicate a clear horizon for our common journey in this world.

The history of this “we”.

That horizon is already present in God’s creative plan: “God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply’” (Gen 1:27-28). God created us male and female, different yet complementary, in order to form a “we” destined to become ever more numerous in the succession of generations. God created us in his image, in the image of his own triune being, a communion in diversity.

When, in disobedience we turned away from God, he in his mercy wished to offer us a path of reconciliation, not as individuals but as a people, a “we”, meant to embrace the entire human family, without exception: “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them” (Rev 21:3).

Salvation history thus has a “we” in its beginning and a “we” at its end, and at its centre the mystery of Christ, who died and rose so “that they may all be one” (Jn 17:21). The present time, however, shows that this “we” willed by God is broken and fragmented, wounded and disfigured. This becomes all the more evident in moments of great crisis, as is the case with the current pandemic. Our “we”, both in the wider world and within the Church, is crumbling and cracking due to myopic and aggressive forms of nationalism (cf. Fratelli Tutti, 11) and radical individualism (cf. ibid., 105). And the highest price is being paid by those who most easily become viewed as others: foreigners, migrants, the marginalized, those living on the existential peripheries.

The truth however is that we are all in the same boat and called to work together so that there will be no more walls that separate us, no longer others, but only a single “we”, encompassing all of humanity. Thus I would like to use this World Day to address a twofold appeal, first to the Catholic faithful and then all the men and women of our world, to advance together towards an ever wider “we”.

To read the complete message of Pope Francis for World Day of Migrants and Refugees 2021, please click here

To access videos about this special day click here: