What's Happening

February 17, 2022, Washington, D.C. – Sisters Donna Markham, OP, and Norma Pimentel, MJ, are defending the humanitarian and Gospel ministries to immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border by Catholic Charities USA (CCUSA) against Catholic detractors who accuse them of luring immigrants across the southern border and even engaging in human trafficking. 

CCUSA and its agencies – including the Humanitarian Respite Center in McAllen, Texas – have received hateful, furious phone calls and unfair coverage on Fox News and other media outlets. 

“Our work is humanitarian,” said Sister Donna, President and CEO of CCUSA, told America Magazine. “It is grounded in our faith.” She noted that Catholic Charities has been doing this work – mandated by the Gospel – since 1910. “This is really our identity, and we don’t have any intention of stopping this ministry.”

As Executive Director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grand Valley, based in Brownsville, Texas, Sister Norma defended her agency’s work at the respite center in McAllen, Texas. The respite center serves people who have left their homeland because of “dire circumstances” and who have been allowed to enter the United States by the federal government, she told America. “We simply offer humanitarian assistance in their time of crisis.”

Read the entire article, written by Kevin Clarke. In addition, read a statement by the General Council of the Adrian Dominican Sisters, standing by the work of CCUSA. 

February 2, 2022, Adrian, Michigan – Sister Patricia Siemen, OP, Prioress of the Adrian Dominican Congregation, was noted in a recent article in National Catholic Reporter’s Earthbeat for her work in the worldwide movement to secure legal rights of non-human life and ecological systems to exist and flourish for their own sake. 

Sister Patricia Siemen, OP

Before being elected Prioress in 2016, Sister Patricia, an attorney, founded and directed the Center for Earth Jurisprudence at Barry University Law School in Orlando, Florida. The Center’s goal is to “advance laws and policies designed to protect the natural systems, species, and entities that sustain life on Earth.”

Read the article on the rights of nature by Barbara Fraser.