Catholic missioners and volunteers act as ‘pilgrims of hope’ for migrants and refugees.
The arid, rugged terrain of El Paso, Texas, could be described as inhospitable. El Pasoans, however, are anything but.
In this border city, Catholic missioners, volunteers and advocates have historically heeded the call to help the stranger and feed the hungry.
For Maryknoll Father Raymond Finch, a New Yorker from Brooklyn who served Indigenous communities in Peru and Bolivia for more than 25 years, that call is a foregone conclusion.
“That’s central to the Gospel message,” he says. “You were a stranger in other lands. Welcome the stranger in your land.”
Since 2022, Father Finch, 76, has served at Cristo Rey Catholic Church in El Paso, after completing his second term as superior general of the Maryknoll Society.
His arrival to El Paso coincided with a post-pandemic migration surge that was overwhelming shelters. By Christmas Eve of that year, hundreds of migrants were sleeping on the streets as temperatures dropped at night as low as 18 F.
Cristo Rey parishioners Claudia Díaz and Gloria Ibarra (left, right) prepare hot meals for migrants and refugees staying at shelters in El Paso, Texas. (Courtesy of Gloria Ibarra/U.S.)
“The people in the parish here, and most people in El Paso — and I was very impressed with this — responded to help,” Father Finch says.
One of them is Gloria Ibarra, a parish staff member at Cristo Rey. She runs a ministry that provides hot meals every Tuesday for two migrant shelters.
The initiative began in 2018 when Ibarra received a call for help from Martyrs Hall shelter, at the time a makeshift emergency shelter located on property owned by the Diocese of El Paso.
Ibarra says she “jumped” at the opportunity to serve. Seven other parishioners joined her.
“Our ministry started by us buying food out of pocket,” Ibarra says. “We would prepare breakfast or lunch and take it down to the Diocese.”
The team prepares up to 130 hot meals in the parish kitchen of the St. Oscar Romero Center, named as such by Father Finch. They cook with migrants’ needs in mind.
“They probably haven’t had something homemade,” Ibarra says about the migrants on long journeys. “So we always provide things like spaghetti, salad and a piece of bread or Mexican cuisine.”
Now with a team of 10 members, the parishioners transport the meals to Martyrs Hall shelter. Holy Family Refugee Center, the other shelter being served by Ibarra’s team, sends volunteers to pick up the food at the parish.
This ministry allows Ibarra, 62, to fulfill a dream she had held since high school: to be a missioner.
“I didn’t get to be a missioner abroad,” she says. “But I’ve come to realize that missionary work is where you are, where God calls you. We all have a mission.”
Monsignor Arturo Bañuelas celebrates a Mass to pray for an end to border violence at the foot of the Santa Fe bridge to Ciudad Juárez. (CNS/Christ Chavez/Rio Grande Catholic/U.S.)
Working with Father Finch, she says, has “enhanced that vision.”
“People in the parish do what they can,” Father Finch says. “My job as a pastor here is to help them live their faith, deepen their faith, go out and spread that faith. Hopefully I can encourage them, inspire them and, once in a while, give them direction.”
Ricardo Lopez has been a parishioner at Cristo Rey since he was a teenager. Now at 62 years old, he serves there in various ministries.
Lopez expects to be ordained as a permanent deacon for the Diocese of El Paso in January of 2025. Then, along with a group of about 120 people, he will go on pilgrimage to Rome for the Jubilee. As a native of El Paso, he has witnessed the “spirit of welcome” that Pope Francis encourages for the Jubilee year in the hospitality of his people.
“The way we look at it is that we are called to serve God’s children,” Lopez explains. Regardless of newcomers’ immigration status, he says, “it’s up to us to provide, to serve them with open arms. Our parish community strives to do that.”
Maryknoll has had a presence on the U.S.-Mexico border since 1993 with priests, sisters and lay missioners serving at shelters, parishes or immigration advocacy centers. As missioners, they have insight into why people migrate.
A woman holds a sign for the demonstration named “Do Not Be Afraid: March and Vigil” organized by the Diocese of El Paso to protest anti-migration bills and legal attacks on shelters. (Screenshot OSV News/Live Streaming Via Facebook/EE. UU.)
Most people “look specifically at the border between Mexico and the United States,” Father Finch says. “But the border is a border between different parts of the world. It’s a border between north and south, and Maryknoll is involved with both worlds.”
The response of the community in El Paso models a Christian alternative to the demonization of migrants and refugees and the militarization of the border.
“For us on the border, solidarity is not just accompaniment,” says Monsignor Arturo Bañuelas. “They no longer become ‘the migrant’ or ‘the poor.’ They are a sister or a brother.”
Monsignor Bañuelas is an advocate for migrant rights and founding chair of Hope Border Institute in El Paso, which documents migration patterns, human rights abuses and root causes of migration.
The encounter with refugees in shelters, says Monsignor Bañuelas, becomes transformative when “you hear the stories of the people, and experience their humanity, their suffering, their hope, and why they came against all the odds.”
He relates the experience of a woman with strong anti-immigrant views who visited a shelter. She talked over dinner with a Central American woman who fled north with her two children after her husband was murdered.
“All of a sudden it wasn’t somebody talking to a migrant. It was mother to mother,” Monsignor Bañuelas says. “God is present in that exchange of solidarity.”
Anti-migrant Senate bills and legal attacks that target shelters have not disrupted that solidarity.
On March 21st, 2024, hundreds poured into the streets of El Paso for a demonstration called “Do Not Be Afraid: March and Vigil for Human Dignity,” organized by Hope Border Institute.
Volunteers registered at Cristo Rey, and a sign-making party was held at the parish.
The march and vigil commemorated the one-year anniversary of a harrowing fire in a detention center that killed 40 migrants in Ciudad Juárez. It also protested a legal suit to shut down Annunciation House, a network of migrant shelters where Maryknoll missioners have served.
“It’s the central tenant of Christianity for Catholics,” says Father Finch. “To feed the hungry, to help the needy, to seek Christ in the person who needs our help. To criminalize that would be disastrous.”
In true El Pasoan character that has been tried and tested, Catholics at the border will continue serving as pilgrims of hope.
“Hope never fails,” says Monsignor Bañuelas. “It engenders in us possibilities of love that are bigger than hate. When you struggle with the poor, you march, you work in shelters … it’s not a painless experience. But when you look at life from the perspective of hope, you [believe] that love is going to win, that justice is going to win. And it’s on its way.”
Featured Image: Maryknoll Father Raymond Finch and Matachines dancers pose at Cristo Rey Church in El Paso, Texas, on the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, celebrated Dec. 12. (Matthew Sim/U.S.)
