Church has responsibility to aid migrants, Mexican bishop says

Published: 2003-11-21

ROME (CNS) -- If going to Mass and receiving Communion does not transform individuals and communities into those who welcome all who are suffering, including migrants, then the full meaning of the Eucharist is being missed, a Mexican bishop said. Bishop Renato Ascencio Leon of Ciudad Juarez told the World Congress for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Refugees that thousands of people pass through his border diocese each year "headed for the American dream." Dozens of them die in the attempt, he said Nov. 21. The bishop, who is president of the Mexican bishops' commission for human mobility, did not single out any specific cases of deaths along the border. But, he said, "almost every day the international media show us the saddest and most deplorable scenes imaginable: groups of emigrants who die trying to reach a country in search of a way to support themselves and their families" or trying to flee violence in their homelands.

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