Inside New York’s iconic St. Patrick’s Cathedral, some 250 Mexican nationals were hailed as anonymous heroes July 11, after dying of COVID-19, which they likely contracted as they kept the city moving when it was experiencing the peak of the pandemic earlier this year.
While his parents and siblings sang in Spanish the words of St. Paul — “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” — the casket containing Father Jorge Ortiz-Garay was lowered into the ground in Mexico City.
The Co-Cathedral of St. Joseph, Prospect Heights, is six miles from St. Mary’s Winfield, Woodside, or more than a two-hour walk — a pilgrimage that Janelli Nunez and her parents, Cira and Antonio, make every year on Dec. 12 for the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
While immigration remains a political flashpoint in the United States, Catholic Church leaders continue their efforts to stand with migrants in the face of opposition and will once more come together on both sides of the border with a Mass this weekend.
Vincenza Julian, a sophomore at The Mary Louis Academy, Jamaica Estates, has grown up hearing about her Uncle Vinny, a firefighter with the New York Fire Department who died at Ground Zero responding to the terror attack at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. An activity at her school during the week leading up to All Souls Day brought her even closer to her uncle.
For a few minutes on a Saturday afternoon, Prospect Park became a Mexican pueblo. Performers from Mexico‘s largest traditional dance troupe, “Los Tecuanes de San Juan Bautista,” had their weekly rehearsal in the park on Sept. 7, drawing a festive crowd and curious passersby.
Five Franciscan Brothers of Brooklyn discovered that when they wore those official-looking clothes for a day in early August during a trip they made to a shelter in El Paso, Texas. They were helping immigrants who had just been in ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) custody.
Cardinal Sergio Obeso Rivera, retired archbishop of Xalapa, Mexico who was created a cardinal by Pope Francis a little over a year ago, died at the age of 87.
Shoelaces, rosaries, diapers, shampoo, Chapstick, baby wipes, water. Basic things that affirm one’s humanity. These are the items that the #Bottles2TheBorder campaign fought to provide for immigrant mothers and their babies as they crossed into America.
As tensions at the U.S.-Mexico border continue to mount, El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz successfully shepherded a group of migrants who had previously been denied asylum in the United States across the border on Thursday, describing their plight as “an affront to human rights and human dignity.”
