What's Happening

September 24, 2021, New York, New York – As the U.S. Catholic Church marks National Migration Week, September 20-26, 2021, Sister Donna Markham, OP, encourages Catholics and all other people of good will to set aside politics and look at the human faces of the immigrants coming to the U.S. southern border. 

The U.S. immigration system is broken and conditions at the southern border are “untenable,” in a special way for Haitian migrants enduring difficult conditions in Del Rio, Texas, Sister Donna wrote. But beyond politics, we are called to see the humanity and suffering of the immigrants, she said. “Look into the eyes of those who seek to come here,” Sister Donna suggested in an Op-Ed published in America Magazine. “Try to understand their stories through those eyes. See the fear and hope that coexist in them.”

Sister Donna, President and CEO of Catholic Charities USA, noted the compassion of staff members of Catholic Charities organizations across the country. “We see the faces and we hear the stories,” she wrote. “And we look daily into the eyes of those in need, including immigrants and refugees.”

Read Sister Donna’s entire article.

September 17, 2021, Adrian, Michigan – Four Adrian Dominican Sisters were among hundreds of U.S. Catholic Sisters to respond to the call of Catholic Charities USA and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) to serve thousands of immigrants who had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border, waiting to be placed with a family member in the United States. 

Pictured clockwise from top left: Sisters Mary Jane Lubinski, OP, Katherine Frazier, OP, Nancy Murray, OP, and Mary Soher, OP.

“The response was immediate, generous beyond expectation, and overwhelming,” Sister Mary Jane Lubinski, OP, one of the four Adrian Dominican Sisters, said during a September 8, 2021, live streamed presentation on the experience. “We went to the border to serve our brothers and sisters who are immigrants. We went on your behalf, and it was an honor. Where one of us is, all of us are.”

The Sisters were assigned to shelters along the border, in Texas and California, where immigrants are housed after detention as they await transportation to a family member or friend who is sponsoring them in the United States. Volunteers included Catholic Sisters, college students, lay people of a variety of religious traditions, and concerned local residents. 

Participating in the presentation with Sister Mary Jane were Sisters Katherine Frazier, OP, Nancy Murray, OP, and Mary Soher, OP.

Watch the presentation below.