Ministries Meeting God in the migrant
stranger
By SANDY J. CARRUBA
Special to the National Catholic
Reporter Buffalo
A migrant laborer -- lets call him Pablo -- begins picking
beans before 7 a.m. in an upstate New York field. Morning dew soaks his
trousers. By midafternoon on this hot summer day, hes sweaty and parched,
but there isnt any drinking water nearby. Without any toilet facilities,
he walks into the woods on the edge of the field to relieve himself.
His wife, Beatriz, works in a different field. Her elderly mother
watches her two young children. She cooks rice and tortillas for supper.
Beatrizs cousin, Marilla, brings salad and, if theyre lucky, a
little chicken. They eat just before dark, outside. Cramped shacks serve as
kitchen, bedroom and living room.
Beatriz, wanting to scrub off the pesticides making her skin itch
and her eyes water, fills a small basin at a pump in the middle of camp, while
Pablo simply bathes in the polluted river.
Such conditions -- characteristic for the vast majority of migrant
workers in the United States -- are shockingly primitive, not to mention
dangerous. Strangely enough, however, relief from them probably wouldnt
be the first thing to come up if you were to ask Pablo or Beatriz what
theyd most like from the Catholic church in America.
Its not that migrants arent acutely aware of the need
for action that leads to justice -- they are. But first, theyre likely to
talk about a sense of welcome, of inclusion, that is too often missing from the
Catholic parishes they encounter as they move across the country.
Roberto Pina of the Mexican-American Cultural Center in San
Antonio puts the challenge to parishes in areas with migrant laborers this way.
Stop looking at them as illegal aliens, he says, but as legal
Catholics, our brothers and sisters. In short, Pina says, pastoral care
of migrants represents a major challenge for the U.S. Catholic church.
Observers say that migrant laborers represent a large pool of
nearly invisible people, most of them Catholic, who move through the country
each year working the harvests. From Central and South America some come for
seven or eight months a year, staying beyond the legal limit for migrant
laborers or never registering in the first place. Their annual earnings usually
range from $4,000 to $8,000.
New York state alone hosts up to 47,000 migrant farm workers every
year, according to the official count -- a tally that virtually everyone
considers much too low. The national numbers are, at a minimum, in the hundreds
of thousands. Migrant workers face remarkably harsh living and working
conditions. According to a 1995 New York state report, conditions in farm labor
camps havent changed much since the 1950s, when they were considered a
national scandal.
As they move around, migrants rarely seek out a parish. Often they
find Mass only in English or parishioners who dont seem warm or
welcoming. The average migrant, experts say, is much more likely to say a few
prayers to Our Lady of Guadalupe and hope that God understands than to walk
into an unfamiliar Catholic parish.
Bishop Henry J. Mansell of the Buffalo, N.Y., diocese has spoken
out frequently on the need for Catholic parishes in areas with migrant
populations to get involved, both in doing personal outreach and in addressing
the broader social and political issues.
Were working against a terrible malaise, Mansell
said. Proposition 187, which denies health care and education benefits to
illegal immigrants, is working its way across the U.S. We bishops lobby against
this, but were the only ones there. We must broaden support, make people
understand how these migrants are living and the effect on the
children.
All is not hopeless, Mansell said. We can build better
experiences of church, he said. The real needs of migrant workers
here in New York state are that there are not enough connections. When the
migrant workers were asked what they want, they asked for religious education
and sacramental preparation for their children.
Mansell met with his pastors, asking that they make contributions
to Hispanic ministry, including outreach to migrants. This effort should
be supported by local parishes. We need to involve more accountability on the
local level.
Mansell wants to meet with camp owners, to solicit their
involvement in efforts to make life more tolerable for workers.
Sister of St. Joseph Mary Jane Mitchell, director of Hispanic
Ministry for the Buffalo diocese, said of the migrants she encounters in
overcrowded, dusty camps, A large majority are still culturally Catholic.
Some ask me for books with prayers in Spanish.
They have no economic or other security, she says.
They constantly look over their shoulders. They can be picked up by the
[Immigration and Naturalization Service] anytime. But precisely because
of those hardships, Mitchell says, migrants sometimes have a deeper sense of
dependence upon God than many other Catholics.
Their sense of faith is different from what we have,
she said. Who else have they got but God?
Mitchells office sends volunteers into camps to help
determine the temporal and spiritual needs. Volunteers cannot change camp
conditions in any fundamental way, but appeals in church bulletins can help
supply some necessities. The volunteers also assess spiritual requirements and
then try to figure out ways their parishes might meet some of those needs.
The church needs to welcome [migrants], said Christina
Martin, former assistant director in the Buffalo office of Hispanic Ministry.
Our churches are just as much theirs as ours.
Martin, who has a history in community organizing, said she sees
her role as establishing a bridge between the migrant and the Anglo
communities. I utilized people where they were, she said. The
charitable step [came first] -- when people did something for the pathetic
poor. The positive step happened once they met the migrants and saw them as
people. Then metamorphosis occurred. Once you interact with someone different,
you discover their human side, and barriers come down.
Across America, as the need for better outreach to migrant
laborers begins to dawn on the church, several positive steps have been
taken:
- A parish in Sioux Falls, S.D., which hosts a large contingent
of seasonal migrant laborers, voted to change its name to Our Lady of Guadalupe
to make migrants feel more welcome.
- In parishes in Brockport and Niagara County, N.Y.,
bienvenida ceremonies are held to welcome the migrants into the
community.
- Parish volunteers in Albion, N.Y., provide transportation for
migrant women to English as a Second Language classes.
- Several parishes in the Buffalo and Syracuse dioceses have
changed their Mass times to accommodate migrants who miss pay when they miss
work.
- The Jacksonville, Fla., diocese has established a special
council as a way to respond to migrants needs and to give
them a voice.
- In Birmingham, Ala., parishes working with local doctors offer
low-cost medical care, charging migrants a minimal fee while the diocese picks
up the rest of the cost.
Still, many pastoral needs go unmet. Barbara Anderson, a parish
volunteer in the Buffalo diocese, says she wishes for more Spanish-speaking
priests -- even though the migrants with whom she deals sometimes speak an
indigenous language rather than Spanish.
I ask the people I visit, Are you a practicing
Catholic? They answer, In Mexico, yes. Here, no. It is hard to
practice here. Anderson believes language is a large part of the
difficulty.
Mitchell agrees. Picture these rural areas, she said.
Rarely are bilingual priests and sisters sent to these parishes. In this
whole area, we have one bilingual priest, who works in the prisons. Even if the
church wanted to respond to migrants needs, no one speaks
Spanish.
The simple fact of being migrants is another, huge part of the
problem. Because of their mobile lifestyle, they never learned about
their faith, but they hold it dear, Mitchell said.
Mitchell believes that a truly effective outreach program must be
holistic. Its got to be a concerted effort by a pastor and pastoral
staff, who must be willing, in a biracial, bicultural parish, to make everyone
feel at home.
Pausing, she adds: Canonically speaking, priests are
responsible for everyone within their parish boundaries.
Mitchell points out that the sporadic nature of Catholic ministry
to migrant workers is not without its consequences. There is a strong,
deep sense of faith without much catechesis, she said. So its
easy to be persuaded by another church.
In western New York, the Pentecostal, nondenominational
churches are active among the migrants. Two have Puerto Rican ministers.
Jehovahs Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists regularly send people into
the camps. Mitchell explains that Hispanic people are more drawn to those
who can communicate in their language.
Minerva Moya of the Buffalo diocese sums it up this way: One
pastor in Orleans County has been supportive and cooperative. But no one comes
to the Spanish Masses because two Pentecostal churches have Hispanic
ministers.
Moy spoke of a parish whose social justice committee visits camps
during the summer and studies Spanish in the winter, in order to be more
effective ministers. If each parish did what that parish did, Hispanics
would know that the church does care, Moya said.
I long for a willingness to reach out and understand the
migrants deep faith, to see a reduction in stereotypes and misconceived
myths. I want to see the migrant farm workers recognized as true to their
faith, generous, hardworking, dedicated to their families.
Mansell argues that taking care of migrants is, in some ways, a
measure of national health. What is a developed country, a developed
people? he asked. Do we measure it on gross national product or the
sensitivity to people and their needs?
National Catholic Reporter, September 25,
1998
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