“We all have the duty to do good.” (Pope Francis)
Two weeks ago, these words, with the waving, smiling image of Pope Francis, were on banners flying from street lamps all over Philadelphia. This message and others like it were repeated all over New York City and Washington, D.C. We all have memories of Pope Francis’ visit. Here are some we were blessed to experience with the Jesuit-founded grassroots network PICO — People Improving Communities through Organizing.
Hundreds of men and women, young and old, mostly Black, Latino and Asian Americans, gathered in a small hotel in New Jersey to encounter Jesus through the pope’s U.S. visit and to follow the call to be missionaries of joy for the most vulnerable in our common home.
After a day of workshops, we set out on an urban procession to pray at three locations: an inner city police station, a federal prison for deporting immigrants, and a low-wage fast food drive-through. At each point, we held up posters with images of faces and the words, “I am created in God’s image. Do you see me?”
The undocumented persons behind the prison walls rapped loudly on the narrow windows as the people outside chanted, “Yes, we see you.”
Then we bussed to Philadelphia and walked miles through several security check points to “talk story” with Cardinal Peter Turkson, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. Mothers from Mexico told him about their disappeared children. An African-American man spoke of a childhood of abusive foster care and surviving to become a Protestant pastor. An immigrant grandmother, with a daughter in the U.S. Navy, talked about her son being arrested and deported for not having a driver’s license, leaving his three children in her care. And an archbishop from Indiana explained how he stopped the expansion of prisons in his archdiocese, calling instead for more services for those coming out of prison and their families.
Cardinal Turkson said that “it is the light of God’s creation that gives us the capacity to see, to see the creation of his image in humans all around us; that we all come from the womb of God’s creation, and therefore are all brothers and sisters.” This was an appropriate reflection in Philadelphia, the “City of Brotherly Love.”
A fundamental message of Pope Francis during his visit was: “We are connected, we are one family. And as one connected human family, we are all equal and have the right to tierra/land, trabajo/work and techo/shelter.” These are basic human rights, he reminded the delegates at the United Nations and the members of the U.S. Congress, rights they need to protect and cultivate for all.
Our Holy Father constantly reminds us that we are called to be protagonists of our present and future — to make history, to be empowered and empowering. Pope Francis called us to put the words of our faith into action. Everywhere he visited, like a channel of God’s light, he focused our attention on the vulnerable, urging us to be instruments of God’s amazing mercy.
The pope’s visit echoed the Gospel mandate, “We all have the duty to do good.”
Mahalo,
Your friends at the Office for Social Ministry
