The Human Family Cries Out — We Respond

We Dominican Sisters of San Rafael express our solidarity with the migrants from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador who are fleeing violence and extreme poverty. They seek protection, opportunity for right livelihood and peace in which to live and raise their families.

• We recognize in these people our common humanity, our shared human needs and desires, and our collective moral responsibility to protect those most in need.
• We acknowledge each country’s responsibility to address conditions and concerns of safety and livelihood; we also acknowledge each country’s legitimate borders and sovereignty. However, when human conditions rise to the level of desperation and crisis, we as a neighboring country with abundant resources have a moral responsibility to respond in compassion and support.
• We call upon ourselves and those who share a vision of common responsibility to the human family to urge our leaders to find a means to receive these migrants, to ensure that they have access to legal counsel and receive a fair resolution to their claims, and to relocate them in welcoming communities.
• We firmly believe this action of welcome will not only address the needs of our brothers and sisters, but will enrich and transform our communities. This action rekindles our country’s deep heritage and capacity for diversity, compassion and integration of untold immigrant populations. This IS who we are as a country; this IS how we became a nation.

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Please join your prayers with ours that the families will be reunited and that all migrants will be allowed to find the peace, security and dignity they seek and deserve.

Prayer to Jesus, the Immigrant
Jesus, as an infant you fled to Egypt with your mother Mary and Joseph.
You were a vulnerable family in a foreign land, looking for shelter and sustenance.
Help us to welcome those like you who cross our borders today.
Give us hearts of compassion, humane response,
and laws that respect the dignity of all immigrants.
Amen.
Adapted from Education for Justice

Express your concern for the newly proposed changes to the immigration law regarding public benefits.  The federal government’s proposed rule “Inadmissibility on Public Charge Grounds”  would ultimately punish immigrants for accessing non-cash benefits designed to keep families fed, healthy and sheltered. This proposal will compromise children’s health, nutrition, and development; impact access to health care; reduce housing options; and negatively affect local economies and destabilize several major industries.   We ask that you go to the website www.protectingimmigrantfamilies.org and add your name to those opposing these new changes. 

An artistic response to children and parents separated at the border

As events in 2018 have unfolded, Sister Joanne Cullimore, OP has been deeply concerned about the separation of families seeking refuge at the southern border of the U.S. “What can I possibly do?” she thought.  “I am not physically able to go. I am not a writer. But as an artist, perhaps I can make a contemporary retablo or ex voto with an urgent prayer to Our Lady of Guadalupe.” To request a prayer card with the image: