By Tracey Primrose
“The Church stands with immigrants.”
That’s the message Fr. Scott Santarosa, SJ, the pastor of San Diego’s Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, and his pastoral team have been delivering nonstop over the last month.
The day before President Trump’s inauguration, and in anticipation of expected executive orders related to immigration, Fr. Santarosa and his pastoral team organized a procession for parishioners through the streets of their Logan Heights neighborhood. Holding signs that said, “We belong,” the parishioners, many of whom are undocumented migrants from Mexico and Central America, sang, prayed and walked in solidarity. They hoped to draw attention to something often overlooked: the humanity of all God’s people.
The week after the procession, Our Lady of Guadalupe hosted “Know Your Rights” presentations after each Mass. Volunteers also handed out wallet-sized cards, in English and Spanish, from the Immigrant Legal Resource Center to help parishioners know what to do if U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) showed up at their door or workplace. Similar workshops are being held at Jesuit high schools, colleges and parishes throughout the Jesuits West Province as ministries bring in lawyers and mental health counselors to guide parishioners, students and their families.
In addition to ongoing Know Your Rights workshops, Our Lady of Guadalupe is hosting preparedness seminars. Fr. Santarosa wants to emphasize the need for families to plan for what happens in a worst-case scenario where one or both parents are deported. “I want families to be thinking about their children and what medications they take and who has guardianship and other important questions. It is horrible to have to contemplate this, but we feel like people are better off at least having some sort of a plan.”
His parishioners are hurting, says Fr. Santarosa. “They are terrified.” He says that many undocumented parishioners are still going to work and coming to church, but they won’t go to the grocery store any longer. “They will have someone else do that rather than put themselves in a situation where they could be picked up by ICE.”
A member of the San Diego Diocese’s Immigration Task Force, Fr. Santarosa recently helped organize a multidenominational prayer service and procession on Super Bowl Sunday. The event started at St. Joseph Cathedral in downtown San Diego, before more than 1,200 attendees processed nearly a mile to the Edward J. Schwartz Federal Building. Event organizers had reserved four rows in the cathedral for clergy and religious, but there were far greater than that in attendance.
Using some of the strongest language to date from a member of the Catholic hierarchy, Cardinal Robert McElroy, bishop of San Diego and archbishop elect of Washington, D.C., spoke at the prayer service. He decried the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants, saying, “God created all of us in dignity. We are all children of our God. And when misery and fear and terror are unleashed upon the land, we cannot stand silent.”
The 12-member San Diego Jesuit community showed up in force for the prayer service and procession. Fr. Santarosa said, “In our faith sharing on Monday night, so many people commented on what a powerful experience it was. In a way, it made us believe in the Church. I think that people are hungry for a way to raise their voices, and we can’t stop now. The Spirit is wanting this to happen.”
