Interfaith service for migrants

Los Angeles Archbishop José Gómez presided at an interfaith prayer service in the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels to pray for the passage of immigration reform.

The service on Friday last week came five days after 10 bishops joined Cardinal Seán O’Malley at the US-Mexican border for a Mass to commemorate those who have died trying to cross the border. “These are human souls, not statistics,” the archbishop told the congregation. “We cannot be indifferent to their suffering. [They] need mercy and they need justice.”

Archbishop Gómez was joined by leaders of the Los Angeles Council of Religious Leaders, which includes other Christian pastors as well as Jewish and Muslim leaders. Representatives of each denomination led prayers at different points in the service.

Meanwhile, the perceived activism of the US bishops garnered criticism from certain conservative Catholics. Al Melvin, a Republican Catholic who is running for governor of Arizona, said Cardinal O’Malley and the bishops who came to Arizona for the Mass at the border were “irresponsible”. “They are not bringing stability to the border,” he said. “They are adding to the chaos of the border.”

Prominent Catholic commentator George Weigel also criticised the bishops for “politicising” the Mass. In an interview on EWTN’s The World Over, Weigel said that “to turn the Mass into an act of, essentially, political theatre is something I thought we had gotten over in the Church no matter how noble the cause might be”. Mr Weigel has previously praised efforts such as the US Bishops’ “Fortnight for Freedom” at which special Masses were held to call attention to the issue of religious liberty.