What's Happening

November 28, 2018, McAllen, Texas – When the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) issued a call recently for Sisters to volunteer for a few weeks at hospitality centers for immigrants, Sisters from several communities responded. Among them are Adrian Dominican Sisters Patricia Erickson, OP, Mary Kastens, OP, and Nancy Murray, OP, who ministered or are ministering at the Catholic Charities Respite Center in McAllen, Texas. Sister Judith Benkert, OP, has served at the hospitality center in El Paso, Texas, where Sister Maurine Barzantni, OP, will serve beginning in early December. 

Read the article in The National Catholic Reporter’s Global Sisters Report by Dan Stockman and Michele Morek.  

September 26, 2018, Adrian, Michigan – The Adrian Dominican Sisters join the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) in calling for opposition to the Trump Administration’s new proposed rule impacting immigrants. The new regulation would penalize immigrant families, forcing parents to choose between accessing medicine, housing, and food for their children and risking their eligibility for possible legal permanent residency.

The LCWR statement follows:

The US Department of Homeland Security’s proposed changes to the public charge regulation are yet another attempt by President Trump to restrict immigration and punish immigrant families. The new regulation would force parents to make impossible choices between the well-being of their families and the prospect of future citizenship.

The rule changes would dramatically increase the barriers to lawful status for low-income immigrants and their families. It could dissuade parents from obtaining benefits for which their children qualify, out of fear that they may not be able to regularize their immigration status in the future. Lack of access to public benefits programs will increase poverty, hunger, homelessness, and disease, and decrease children’s school attendance and general well-being.

This attempt to target the most vulnerable within the immigrant community violates the tenets of our faith and threatens the values of our nation. We are called by our faith to welcome the stranger and care for the most vulnerable and we are challenged by our national values to promote the welfare of our children and tend the common good. If we want our communities to thrive, all families in those communities mast have access to the care and services they need and to which they are entitled. The Trump administration’s proposed changes to the public charge regulation threaten us all.

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious urges all people of faith to call for protection of immigrants, especially those who are most vulnerable, and to register their objections to this unreasonable and mean-spirited proposal during the 60-day comment period.