PAPAL VISIT
Immigrant child pleads for legal status in note to pontiff
It looked to many like the impetuousness of youth when Sophie Cruz made a dash into the street during a parade in Washington this week, and sprinted toward the Popemobile. In a moment captured by world media, Pope Francis blessed the young girl after she was held aloft by his normally steely security. Unbeknownst to the papal entourage, the moment had been scripted by a group that had been preparing for nearly a year for the young girl from Los Angeles to reach the Pope. Read the story behind this seemingly spontaneous moment
Sophie Cruz’s brief encounter with Pope Francis during his parade in Washington this week appeared to be the kind of spontaneous moment that is so endearing about this Pope: an initially hesitant young child wrapping an arm around his neck as he offers a kiss and a blessing.
But for five-year-old Sophie, the moment unfolded as perfectly as it was scripted by members of a coalition of Los Angeles-based immigration rights groups. They had been preparing for nearly a year for the young girl from suburban Los Angeles to make a dash for the popemobile to deliver a message about the plight of immigrant parents living in the United States illegally.
They had even pulled off a similar public-relations coup a year ago in Rome using a 10-year-old girl with the Pope.
“We planned to do this from the moment we learned he was coming to the States,” Juan Jose Gutierrez of the Full Rights for Immigrants Coalition told The Associated Press.
Gutierrez said the group decided to use the children of immigrants to represent their push for immigration reforms to the Pope, a staunch supporter of immigrants.
“We have been looking for children to make the case that we as adults have been making for years,” he said.
Sophie was selected for the Washington trip because she “impressed us all so much that we felt she would be our best spokesman,” Gutierrez said.
If she had been unsuccessful in Washington attracting the Pope’s attention, he said, she would have travelled with the group to New York, then Philadelphia to try again.
Sophie refused to the leave the pope’s side Wednesday until a bodyguard took a handwritten letter and a T-shirt.
Her note to Francis detailed fears that her parents, immigrants from Mexico who don’t have legal status in the United States, could be deported. But their risk of being deported is slight under the Obama administration’s policies, which focus on deporting serious criminals.
“I believe I have the right to live with my parents,” Sophie told the AP after her moment with the pontiff. “I have the right to be happy. My dad works very hard in a factory galvanizing pieces of metal. All immigrants just like my dad feed this country. They deserve to live with dignity. They deserve to live with respect.”