Forgive us, St. Frances, patron of immigrants. In your day, Italian immigrants were treated despicably, but nowhere near as badly as ICE treats brown-skinned people today. By now we’re sadly familiar with the abuses: children zip-tied. Masked men deporting people in unmarked vans, with no due process. Most have no criminal records, were working productively and raising their families in the U.S. for many decades. They vanish into the gulag of prisons in countries with track records of torturing inmates. Detention centers multiply and flights for unknown destinations take off daily at taxpayers’ expense. And when did we, or our representatives in Congress authorize this racist purge?
Here’s what you might like, Frances: neighbors taking immigrant’s children to school, so they can avoid ICE agents there. The people of Chicago and its suburbs vehemently rejecting massive deportations based only on skin color, arming themselves with whistles and a network to warn about the location of the next raid. As reported by Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, people buying all the vendor’s tamales by 8 am so he can return to the safety of home, or lines stretching around the blocks in Evanston, IL to donate food.
You might see parallels to your own day: despair at anti-immigrant bigotry, or as you wrote in your journal, “my God, what sadness!” You felt the stings of arduous travel, vast poverty, warring factions within the Italian community, overwhelming need, recalcitrant clergy, and tensions with the Irish. You and your sisters must’ve cringed when you heard, “you’re only taking care of a few dirty Italians.” But despair never stopped you. Your work grew from a small orphanage in New York City in 1889 to a national network of 67 educational, medical and social service institutions. Without a master plan, you modeled creativity, even panning for gold in Colorado in 1916, hoping to finance the Denver orphanage. You didn’t wait for permission from church authorities to act; indeed, much of the good now seems to spring directly from the people.
You’d like the 50 lay volunteers, bishops, and clergy who accompany people to immigration court in San Diego, trying to bring a little dignity and accountability to the unjust proceedings. You’d like Bishops Seitz, Flores, Wenski and Cardinal Cupich, who speak out for immigrants, defying the current administration. And you would’ve enjoyed the victory speech of Zohran Mandami, newly elected Muslim mayor of New York City, who thanked those who’d gotten him elected: “Yemeni bodega owners and Mexican abuelas. Senegalese taxi drivers and Uzbek nurses. Trinidadian line cooks and Ethiopian aunties.” Like you, St. Frances, he knows we’re a nation of immigrants. Don’t ever let us forget it!
Kathy Coffey 