Catholic bishops push (again) on immigration reform

Left to right, Archbishop Thomas G. Wenski of Miami, Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson and Bishop Eusebio Elizondo are members of U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Migration. The committee held a press conference on Thursday (May 29) on Capitol Hill before going to speak to members of the House of Representatives to push immigration reform efforts. Religion News Service photo by Heather Adams

WASHINGTON (RNS) Catholic bishops returned to Capitol Hill on Thursday (May 29) with a renewed push for immigration reform, as Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski called the failure to address immigration reform “a stain on the soul of our nation.”

Before fanning out to meet with lawmakers, members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Migration held a Mass at a Capitol Hill church that recalled a dramatic Mass they held April 1 along the U.S.-Mexican border.

Wenski, the committee’s chairman, said, “When laws fail to advance the common good, they can and they should be changed.”

The bishops’ push was accompanied by a separate open letter to House Speaker John Boehner, a Catholic, signed by 30 Catholic leaders, including the Rev. Larry Snyder, CEO of Catholic Charities USA, and the Rev. Thomas H. Smolich, who oversees Jesuit priests in the U.S.

“Legislative obstruction in the face of preventable suffering and death is not only a failure of leadership. It is immoral and shameful,” the letter said. “The eyes of our God — who hungers for justice and commands us to welcome the stranger and bind the wounds of those left by the side of the road — are on us.”

A choir led songs during a Mass held by members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Migration at a Capitol Hill church on Thursday (May 29). The service included multiple languages, such as Swahili, Arabic, Spanish, German and English. Religion News Service photo by Heather Adams

Advocates have been pushing the House to pass an immigration bill for months; the Senate passed the bill last June but it has faced steep opposition in the Republican-controlled House, where Boehner says it lacks the votes to pass.

Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson, Ariz., said that the prelates planned to tell some of the stories from the border Mass to lawmakers to humanize the immigration debate because “when there’s a faceless person, it’s easy to reject or ignore or put aside that person.”

During Wenski’s homily, he said the immigrants aren’t criminals and are looking to “regain themselves with honest work.”

“They aren’t outside the law because they want to be,” Wenski said, adding that undocumented immigrants should have the chance to earn U.S. citizenship.

KRE/AMB END ADAMS