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Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York joined its sister agencies in the Diocese of Brooklyn and the Diocese of Rockville Centre Nov. 22 on a pilgrimage of prayerful solidarity with the immigrant community.
The symbolic pilgrimage, which began in Rockville Centre, included 11 pilgrims from each diocese, with each representing 1 million of the approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. The 11 Long Islanders left from St. Agnes Cathedral, taking the train to Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn. There they joined 11 Brooklyn and Queens pilgrims to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge where they met 11 more pilgrims representing Catholic Charities of New York for the final leg of the journey down Broadway, past Wall Street to Our Lady of the Rosary Church and finally to Battery Park. The East River stood in for the Rio Grande, which many immigrants from Latin America have to forge to enter the United States. The route down Broadway passed some of the nation’s leading financial institutions representing the hope and economic might of the United States.
At Our Lady of the Rosary one migrant selected from each of the three Catholic Charities dioceses related their own immigration story. In Battery Park the group stopped at selected monuments with symbolic significance to the American immigration experience, including the immigrants’ statue and Castle Clinton, which pre-dated Ellis Island as a point of arrival for immigrants. They also stood at the edge of Manhattan looking toward the Statue of Liberty in the harbor. At each stop they prayed the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary. Then the pilgrims returned to Our Lady of the Rosary for a brief prayer service.
“The objective was to raise awareness of the solidarity that the Church has with the immigrant community,” explained Tom Dobbins, the justice and peace coordinator in the Department of Social and Community Development for archdiocesan Catholic Charities. “It’s also to raise awareness for the need for comprehensive immigration reform. It was really the three dioceses coming together around this issue. We wanted to do something locally. But we wanted do something a little bit more prayerful.”
Dobbins noted that immigration reform was not about allowing illegal immigrants to jump ahead of legal immigrants to gain access to permanent residency and perhaps eventual citizenship.
“Of course there is a recognition that certainly they have wound up coming in perhaps without documents, without papers. There are many different circumstances…that can arise,” he said. “But that’s why the immigration bill that is proposed now recognizes that there needs to be a path for citizenship where people who have indeed broken the law, if you will, will not receive an amnesty.
“They will be able to earn citizenship over a select period of time. They will be able to pay back fines that will recognize the law they have broken. So there will be satisfaction for that infraction. But then at the same time it offers these families a path forward.”
According to a report released Nov. 25 by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Group, 63 percent of Americans, across party and religious lines, support legal residency with an option for eventual citizenship. Comprehensive immigration reform remains stalled in Congress.
The House has failed to take up a Senate bill that passed in June. House Speaker John Boehner has said that he has “no intention” of debating the proposal.
“Immigration is very important to preserving the dignity of humans,” said Gabriela Arechiga, a parishioner of St. Jean Baptiste in Manhattan who was one of the pilgrims. “I’m not an immigrant but I know a lot of people who are immigrants...They’re humans and everybody deserves the right to have a stable place to live.”
