Nuns to discuss immigrant issues at meet
A group of Catholic nuns whose stances on social issues have drawn fire from the Vatican will turn their attention to ensuring humane treatment for detained immigrants when it meets in Houston this week.
A group of Catholic nuns whose stances on social issues have drawn fire from the Vatican will turn their attention to ensuring humane treatment for thousands of detained Central American mothers and children this week when it meets in Houston for its 2015 national assembly. Approximately 800 members of the Maryland-based Leadership Conference of Women Religious, representing about 80 percent of the nation’s 50,000 nuns, will convene Tuesday at the downtown Hyatt for the fiveday assembly.
On Friday, they will discuss the plight of approximately 2,000 Central American women and children held in two South Texas detention camps.
“Sometimes people think that if they lock them up the problem will go away,” said Sister Lourdes Leal of San Antonio, who will lead the discussion. “That isn’t the answer.”
Added Sister Ann Scholz, the organization’s associate director for social mission, “It is a harrowing experience to be locked up, particularly if you’re a child. I cannot imagine being unable to move freely. I also have no conception of what it’s like to not know what’s happening and what the future holds. For the most part, these were women literally fleeing for their lives.”
The nuns will view video testimony of three Central American women who now have been released from detention.
In late July, California federal Judge Dolly Gee ruled that detained families should be released as soon as possible. The privately run Texas detention facilities — a third, smaller unit operates in Pennsylvania — were in violation of provisions requiring that children be housed in facilities licensed for their care, she said. On Thursday, Justice Department lawyers filed a 60-page response asking the judge to reconsider her decision.
‘We demand justice’
Gee’s order, the lawyers argued, might mean that detained families could not be held more than five days — a restriction that “functionally terminates” the government’s ability to begin deportation proceedings. They also contended that the judge’s order might prove an incentive for more families to illegally enter the country.
Scholz said immigrant issues resonate with Catholic sisters.
“We came to this country nearly 300 years ago, following immigrants to serve immigrant populations,” she said. “Our ministry to new immigrants continues to this day in schools, hospitals and social service agencies. We demand justice for new immigrants.”
The national meeting in Houston is the first since the Vatican ended a contentious review of the group’s policy positions, which included, Rome asserted, “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.”
Citing “serious doctrinal problems,” the Vatican’s doctrinal office also accused the women religious of devoting excessive zeal to battling poverty and social injustice at the expense of combating abortion and same-sex marriage. With the advent of Pope Francis, a church leader sensitive to the plight of the poor, the review, begun in 2012, came to a relatively harmonious conclusion in April.
What the future holds
Meeting in a closed-door session on Wednesday, former organization presidents and executive directors will discuss implications of the review.
Spokeswoman Sister Annmarie Sanders said the group will employ “contemplative discernment” to “see what the whole process means to this organization, what we can learn from that and what might be of use to the wider world.”
Sanders said the organization, founded in 1956 at the request of the Vatican, remains committed to establishing economic justice, abolishing modern-day slavery, upholding immigrant rights, promoting nonviolence and protecting the environment.