Bishop condemns Trump’s ‘war on the poor’ at border vigil

‘We say to all those who live in fear of deportation: the Church stands with you in this hour of darkness.’

Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso, the chairman of the US Catholic Bishops Conference’s Committee on Migration, delivered strong words and a warning on Monday to the administration of President Donald Trump over its escalating crackdown against immigrants and asylum seekers along the country’s southern border and nationwide.

In a sermon delivered to a congregation of nearly 500, as well as scores of diocesan clergy and members of religious orders, a dozen US and Canadian bishops and a Vatican cardinal, Bishop Seitz criticised those whose actions in this world are motivated by the desire for wealth or empire as “idolatry of the worst sort”.

He then turned his argument to the Trump administration’s so-called “hardening” of the US-Mexico border, involving the deployment of US Army troops and the increased presence of armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents throughout the borderlands region, calling it “simply empire masquerading in the guise of security for the benefit of a select few”.

Through indiscriminate arrests and deportation of immigrants, a ban on the granting of asylum to refugees from violence in their home countries, and escalating attacks against church and non-profit agencies that provide migrants with humanitarian and legal aid, Bishop Seitz said the new administration has become actively engaged in a “war on the poor”.

“If we do not speak out, if we do not act, this war will have no end. And we will act,” he pledged, “and will do so non-violently, under the sign of the cross”.

Referencing a series of executive orders and federal actions that have undercut federal grants to church, charitable and local agencies to fund the provision of assistance to immigrants and asylum seekers, Seitz alluded to critics who have said the Church’s interests lay in lining its coffers with the federal funding.

“There is a clear attempt to delegitimise our voice. Anchored in faith, we will not be intimidated,” he pledged.

“We say to all those who live in fear of deportation … the Church stands with you in this hour of darkness,” the bishop said, to rousing applause. “And to those in a position of responsibility for our country, I make this solemn plea: Stop the asylum ban! Stop the deportations!”

Border bishop invites diocese to protest Trump migration policies

The assault on solidarity

Bishop Seitz delivered the sermon during a vigil held to commemorate the Feast Day and forty-fifth anniversary of the death of St Oscar Romero, the Archbishop of San Salvador who was martyred by an assassin’s bullet while saying Mass on 24 March 1980, because of his vocal defence of human rights and the dignity of the poor.

Prior to the vigil, Bishop Seitz led a march to proclaim the diocese support for the respect of immigrants’ rights through the downtown streets of El Paso, a city of 700,000 residents that is one of the principal crossing points along the 2,000-mile border between the US and Mexico.

Accompanied by the raucous beat of neighbourhood parish drum troupes and dancers in Native American dress bearing banners of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patroness of the Americas, a sombre line of bishops from the US and Canada along with Cardinal Fabio Baggio of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development walked side-by-side with Bishop Seitz at the front of the march.

Behind them were over 400 participants, walking the mile-and-a-half south from the city centre to the Jesuit mission church of the Sacred Heart, in the historic Barrio Segundo neighbourhood of El Paso, just four blocks from the border with Mexico, where the vigil was held.

Chanting ¡Aqui Estamos, y No Nos Vamos! (“Here we are, and we’re not going anywhere!”), priests, brothers, nuns and lay Catholics of all ages carried banners bearing the Virgin of Guadalupe’s image, along with signs and placards with slogans calling for just and compassionate treatment of immigrants and refugees seeking asylum in the United States.

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