In the summer of 2022, as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott began busing newly arrived migrants north to “sanctuary cities,” a wave of families — many from Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Haiti, and Central America began arriving at Catholic parishes across East New York in Brooklyn.
At Mary, Mother of the Church, it started with a single encounter: A Venezuelan mother named Iraima approached me after morning Mass, asking for help.
What began as a Saturday barbecue for six families soon grew into a full-fledged ministry serving as many as 200 people a week.
The migrants’ stories were as harrowing as they were humbling: accounts of trekking through the Darién Gap’s mud and jungle, riding atop “La Bestia” through Mexico, and surviving journeys that claimed the lives of others along the way.
Yet, what struck me most was not their suffering but their generosity: When a group of mothers was invited to take as much donated baby food as they needed, they took only what was necessary, explaining that others might need it later.
The parish’s Sunday Community Dinners, which began as informal cookouts on the rectory patio, moved into the parish hall by fall, offering hundreds of migrants not just food but community, dignity, and a taste of home unavailable in the city’s shelter system.
That first Thanksgiving, immigrant families turned the tables, cooking and serving the very parishioners who had been serving them, and staging a children’s reenactment of the original 1621 feast — a moment that was one of the most meaningful in my 45 years of ministry.
As needs grew, so did the response: diaper drives that once blocked the rectory’s front door, a Mothers’ Pantry organized and staffed by immigrant women themselves, and donations flowing in from parishes across Brooklyn, Queens, and the Diocese of Rockville Centre. Bishop Robert Brennan himself arrived one evening with a car full of diapers. Neighboring parishes in Brooklyn Deanery 6 — St. Michael-St. Malachy, Our Lady of Presentation-Mercy, Blessed Sacrament, St. Fortunata, and others — joined with hot lunches, thrift shops, and food pantries, deepening collaboration across the six-parish deanery.
Not every story ended in New York.
One family, Jonathan and Lissette, journeyed from Venezuela through Peru and the Darién Gap before settling briefly in Brooklyn, eventually relocating to North Carolina.
Months later, they tried to wire money back to the parish through Zelle — an offer I gently declined, moved by the fact that a family who had arrived with nothing wanted to give back from what little they had.
Reflecting on three years of ministry, I frame the work not as charity extended downward but as a mutual gift — an opportunity, in the words of St. Francis, to discover that it is in giving that we receive.
The migrants’ presence has deepened my parish’s own sense of mission and community, turning Sunday worship into lived Gospel practice: feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, and clothing the naked, not because of need alone, but because of who we are called to be as Christians.