CNS STORY: Helping migrant workers remains major challenge, says bishop

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CNS Story:

NEVINS-MIGRANTS Jan-17-2007 (700 words) xxxn

Helping migrant workers remains major challenge, says bishop

By Catholic News Service

IMMOKALEE, Fla. (CNS) -- Helping to improve the lives of migrant farmworkers remains "one of the major opportunities and challenges" facing Florida Catholics, said Bishop John J. Nevins of Venice.

Migrant workers "look to us with eyes of hope for the benefits of decent and just wages, safe and reasonably priced housing and health care for themselves and their family members," he said in a Jan. 14 pastoral letter to mark World Day of Migrants and Refugees.

Bishop Nevins' pastoral letter was titled "Always Remember the Farmworkers."

"We encourage all people to work in partnership with farmworker organizations and farmworkers in their quest for fair wages, safe working conditions and dignity," he said.

"Workers also have the right to organize," he said.

The bishop issued the letter while visiting Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish in Immokalee. He said it was fitting to issue the letter at the parish because Our Lady of Guadalupe is a uniting force in the Americas and her "mestiza face" shows that Christ's message "cuts across all cultures."

The Immokalee region also has been the focus of a major effort to improve farmworker wages and labor conditions, led by the 2,500-member Coalition of Immokalee Workers. The coalition began meeting more than 13 years ago in a local Catholic church. In 2005, the coalition signed an agreement with Florida agricultural companies and Yum Brands, the parent company of Taco Bell, to improve wages and living conditions for fruit and vegetable pickers.

The pastoral letter did not mention the coalition, but Bishop Nevins has supported coalition efforts such as the Taco Bell agreement.

"Among us there are no residents or visitors, Floridians or foreigners, tourists or time sharers, farmworkers or growers, elderly or young. We are all one in Christ," the bishop said.

Peace and justice are promoted "when we view our responsibilities to each other as crossing national, racial, economic and even ideological differences," he said.

The church's "preferential option for the poor" is not meant to divide people, said the bishop. "It does not call for class warfare."

But the option requires Catholics to consider their willingness to provide financial support to projects to help the poor and to pay higher taxes for improved government programs, he said.

"There are some who judge the status of a nation on the basis of its technological advances or its rate of economic growth. Both are important," the bishop said. "However, the moral test of a society is how it treats its most vulnerable members."

The Jan. 14 World Day of Migrants and Refugees came after the Jan. 7-13 celebration of National Migration Week sponsored by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The week's theme was "Welcoming Christ in the Migrant."

At St. Pius V Church in St. Louis a banner had the word "welcome" in 17 languages as the multinational and multiethnic parish commemorated the week with a Jan. 7 Mass. The parish is home to immigrants from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe and Latin America.

Vince Estrada, parish council president, said that National Migration Week is a reminder that the diversity of the parish helps Catholics appreciate the gifts of others and helps "enhance our celebration of faith and worship."

In Denver, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput wrote a newspaper column asking people to avoid bigotry against foreigners when discussing immigration reform issues.

"If we act and speak like bigots, that's what we become," he said in his Jan. 10 column in the Denver Catholic Register, the archdiocesan newspaper.

The archbishop said that after hundreds of illegal immigrants were arrested at several Swift meatpacking plants in Colorado and several other states he received an e-mail from a person expressing the hope that the families of those arrested "starve to death."

"How can a person consider himself a Christian with this kind of vindictive brutality on his lips?" asked Archbishop Chaput.

The archbishop said he supports "the kind of immigration reform that will address our economic and security needs, but also regularize the status of the many decent undocumented immigrants who help our society to grow."

- - -

Contributing to this story was Joseph Kenny in St. Louis.

END

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