His response startled me. “There’s too much emphasis on what we sacrifice to enter religious life,” he said. “For me, the vows are incredibly freeing. They set clear boundaries in my life so that I can live and love without abandon within those boundaries.”

Point taken.

For lay Catholics, perhaps we focus too readily on what our religious give up over what they gain. Three articles in this issue focus on those incredible gains. From Father Ruskin Piedra’s renowned work with immigrants, to Sister Rita Clare Yoches’ transition from professional football player to nun, to the cross-country pilgrimage of the Sisters of Loretto, this issue celebrates the freedoms that religious women and men experience in their vocations.

This issue is a humble homage to those who chose a different path of God and to God. You are our guides along that path.

1. The Agony in the Garden. Christ’s agony becomes more severe when he thinks about Mary, his mother. She is sensing her son’s fears about the suffering he will soon have to face, including a painful death on the cross. Because of his love for his disciples, he also frets about the horror and trepidation they will face. He can only imagine what will happen to these 12 individuals whom he had personally invited to follow after him. No wonder our Savior’s sweat seemed to turn to blood! Lord Jesus, give us your love and strength in our own moments of agony!

2. The Scourging at the Pillar. Jesus’ suffering was not yet complete. We rightly place the words of Isaiah on Jesus’ lips: “I gave my back to those who beat me” (Is 50:6). Jesus, of course, deserved no punishment. Pilate did not believe the accusations of the crowd. Yet, he allowed Jesus to be “scourged” (Mt 27:26).This was not the first time that an innocent person had to suffer for the sins of the guilty. Although he was treated most unfairly, Jesus was not one to ask for pity. To the weeping women who met him along the way to his death, Jesus said, “Do not weep for me; weep instead for yourselves and for your children” (Lk 23:28). Loving Savior, you suffered with great dignity. We are grateful to you for bearing our guilt in a most generous way!

3. The Crowning with Thorns. “Like a lamb led to the slaughter or a sheep before the shearers, he was silent and opened not his mouth” (Is 53:7). Because Christ is our king, he truly deserves to wear a golden crown—and not be mocked with a crown of thorns. While Pilate’s style of authority earned him no right to wear a crown, Jesus, through his example of humble service, certainly won that right. And yet, as Luke’s Gospel tells us, soldiers put a crown of thorns on him and saluted him: “‘Hail, king of the Jews!’ They struck his head with a reed and spat on him; and they went down on their knees to do him homage” (Lk 15:18-20). Jesus, we proudly place ourselves in the community of those who salute and honor you as our king!

4. The Carrying of the Cross. “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it” (Mk 8:34-35). Jesus was surely a man of sorrows. But, in carrying this cross of shame, he was really on the road to glory. His day of suffering would pass, and Jesus would end up on a throne of glory. In the words of the Apostles’ Creed, “He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from there he will come to judge the living and the dead.” Jesus, we thank you for showing us the path to glory!

5. The Crucifixion of Jesus. Jesus is the mediator between God and humanity. “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (Jn 15:13). In the Gospel of Mark, we read: “It was nine o’clock in the morning when they crucified him” (15:25). Mark gives other details as well: “There were also women looking on from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of the younger James” (15:40). It all boils down to helping us see the wonderful truth: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (Jn 3:16). We thank you, loving Savior, for your great act of charity!

The Sorrowful Mysteries (and the other mysteries) make up one wonderful love story between God and us. Thanks be to God!

Next Month: The Glorious Mysteries

The chair speaks as much when it is empty as when it is occupied, because, either way, it reminds us of the office of the local bishop which remains a reality within the diocese even as the individual bishops come and go. The chair, then, is a reminder of the office regardless of who the present bishop might be, or whether or not he is physically present.

Today we celebrate the feast of the Chair of St. Peter. Again, we are not celebrating a piece of furniture, but the role and office of Peter within the Church. And that office, presently held by Pope Francis, has been around for over 2,000 years and is both a source of authority and unity as well as a cause of significant tension among the followers of Jesus. So why celebrate it?

We celebrate the feast for several reasons. First, it is a day when we recognize who and what the chair stands for. The chair of Peter is not the chair of a local bishop, for the chair of the Bishop of Rome is in his cathedral of John Lateran. So, while the present occupant of the Chair of Peter is Pope Francis, we are not focusing on his role as the local bishop of the diocese of Rome.

Rather, we’re celebrating his role as shepherd or bishop of the universal Church, a role that is intricately one with, but not identical to, his position as bishop of Rome. So the chair of Peter is, first, a stand-in for the pope as bishop of the world-wide Church.

We are also celebrating the authority of the universal bishop. It’s the authority given by Jesus to Peter to lead and guide the Church in Jesus’ place. For Jesus told Peter that “you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church . . .” (Mt 16:18). In his Letter to the Galatians, we see St. Paul acknowledging this fact by seeking Peter’s approval for his ministry, for he recognized Peter as the first among the apostles (Gal 1:18). This authority and role, we believe as Catholics, is passed down and exercised by the pope, just as the authority and role of the apostles is passed down and exercised by the bishops in union with the pope.

Here, I think, it would be good to recognize the somewhat unique way in which our present pope views this position. Pope Francis sees his role primarily as a servant-authority uniting and guiding the Church members as we grow in the life of the Holy Spirit. He is less inclined to conceive of it as one of dictating or ruling-over others. He clearly believes in the sensus fidelium, the universal, gut faith of the entire Church inspired by the Holy Spirit.

He views his role as pope as the coordinator and animator of that faith. He is not one to act autocratically, yet, he realizes that he is the supreme teacher and authority in the Church, for he exercises the office of Peter. It’s just that he is not about flaunting his role, but, rather, about using it to serve the faithful. He is a rather conservative pontiff in many ways, especially when it comes to doctrine, for he certainly does not view the Church as a democracy and its doctrine as determined by popular vote. But he likes to listen and discern where the Holy Spirit is leading the Church.

Finally, we are celebrating the unity that the Chair of St. Peter symbolizes. Since apostolic times, the various Churches founded by the original apostles were somewhat independent—partly due to distance and the lack of communication systems—yet united in faith under the leadership of St. Peter. Today, for example, within the Roman Rite, we have the various national conferences of bishops who exercise a certain independence within the unity of the universal Church of Rome. In this, they exercise a unity without uniformity.

Ecumenically speaking, many of the churches have come to accept the value of the Chair of St. Peter and all that it stands for, especially as a sign of unity without uniformity. Others still find it objectionable, if not offensive. But for the Catholic community, the feast of the Chair of St. Peter stands as a celebration of the authority and unity that Jesus created for his Church on earth as exercised by our pope.

An authority and a unity that does not totally depend on the person who presently holds the office, for it is an authority and a unity that is bigger than any one person. While the personality and temperament of a pope certainly can and does influence the position in very definite ways, the role will outlive him to see another occupant on the chair. Everything pointing to the fact that it is the Holy Spirit who truly runs the Church, but through various human beings who, of course, have their gifts and foibles.

We celebrate the feast of the Chair of St. Peter rejoicing in the guidance and the role of the Holy Spirit, thanking Jesus for the authority he shares with mere humans, and we pray for the person God has chosen to occupy the Chair of St. Peter at the present time.

This engaging drama, from director Fernando Meirelles and screenwriter Anthony McCarten, imagines the papacy of the Roman Catholic Church as never before. The film opens with a conclave following the death of Pope John Paul II in 2005. Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio (Jonathan Pryce) receives some votes, which makes Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Anthony Hopkins) nervous. It becomes obvious that he does not like Bergoglio. Ratzinger is elected and takes the name Benedict XVI. Bergoglio goes home with a sigh of relief.

Fast-forward to 2013. Bergoglio writes a letter of resignation as archbishop of Buenos Aires to the pope, who does not reply. He buys a ticket to Rome and arrives at Castel Gandolfo after a long flight. Benedict makes him wait, so he visits with the gardener. Benedict greets the Latin American cardinal and invites him to talk as they walk in the garden, but he is brusque. Bergoglio is confused and tries to give Benedict his resignation letter, but Benedict refuses to take it.

That evening, they meet in the living room and talk soccer, the piano, and the tango. Benedict coldly tells Bergoglio, “I don’t like what you think, say, or do.” The next day, Benedict is called to Rome and they continue their conversation in the Sistine Chapel. As the day wears on, they talk about their earlier lives and one confesses to the other, who then gives absolution. They share a pizza together, and Benedict tells Bergoglio he is going to resign.

The magic of this mostly fictional film from Netflix is that it imagines an example of authentic listening and dialogue. We learn tolerance from a German pope and an Argentinian cardinal as each one comes to understand the views of the other. They give, take, push, and pull. In the end, they not only tolerate the other’s theological and pastoral perspectives, but also respect them. Based on the play and book The Pope: Francis, Benedict, and the Decision that Shook the World, the film is a vehicle for the brilliant Pryce and Hopkins to become their characters and show us how to get along in a chaotic world. The Two Popes is award worthy.

A-3, PG-13 References to clergy sex abuse.

The Irishman (Netflix)

Martin Scorsese returns to one of his preferred genres with The Irishman, based on the true story of Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), a Philadelphia truck driver who becomes a hitman for the Bufalino crime family in the mid-1950s. He steals and sells merchandise from the truck and is arrested. A lawyer for the teamsters’ union, Bill Bufalino (Ray Romano), gets him off and introduces him to Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci).

Sheeran begins to do jobs—including murders—for the mob, and Russell introduces him to trade unionist Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino). He has business ties to the Bufalino family and is in a tight place. The federal government is on to Hoffa’s activities, and a younger member of the teamsters’ union, Anthony Provenzano (Stephen Graham), is threatening his position.

Hoffa, who cannot stand Robert F. Kennedy (Jack Huston), the attorney general under John F. Kennedy, ends up in prison for jury tampering. When he gets out of jail, Hoffa seeks to regain his position with the union. Frank continues to act friendly with Hoffa, but things soon change.

The only thing I appreciated about Scorsese’s three-and-a-half-hour film is the ending. The priest (Jonathan Morris) is endlessly patient as he leads the aging Frank to repentance after serving 13 years for fraudulent business practices and a life of crime. Based on Charles Brandt’s book I Heard You Paint Houses, Stephen Zaillian’s script tells a mob story we’ve seen many times before. Repentance is the key theme here. It is never too late.

L, R Violence, pervasive language.

Marriage Story (Netflix)

Writer/director Noah Baumbach returns to familiar territory with this film about a couple, Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) and Charlie (Adam Driver), who decide to divorce. Charlie is a busy theater director in Manhattan, and Nicole is an actress starring in one of his plays. The film opens with the two listing the good qualities of the other during a counselling session, but this cannot overcome Nicole’s inability to forgive Charlie’s infidelity. They decide on an amicable divorce, and Nicole takes their son, Henry (Azhy Robertson), with her to California, where she is starring in a television pilot. When expensive lawyers get involved (Laura Dern, Alan Alda, and Ray Liotta), things become acrimonious over child custody.

Marriage Story is a bleak and sad tale of the death of a marriage. What is so startling is Nicole and Charlie’s lack of depth about their lives. Yes, they mourn the end of their marriage, but Baumbach’s script offers no emotional or spiritual rationale for their sorrow. It is unclear if they knew why they married in the first place. They give up so easily.

Not yet rated, R Domestic arguments, brief reference to an extramarital affair.

The middle of winter might not seem like the logical time to reflect on the health of the environment. After all, we’ve likely already compartmentalized that issue, marking it on our calendars for Earth Day and the beginning of spring.

But what if we considered incorporating ecological awareness and stewardship into our Lenten journeys? Doing so connects strongly with our faith’s call to care for God’s creation and could very well surprise us with new ways to grow in our spiritual lives during this season of sacrifice and repentance. Recent developments in the Church and renewed calls for ecological conversion shed light on the importance of care for creation and point to its relevance during Lent.

Our Earth Cries Out

Taking care of the earth is not new to Catholic social teaching. In a 1971 apostolic letter, Pope Paul VI wrote, “Man is suddenly becoming aware that by an ill-considered exploitation of nature he risks destroying it and becoming in his turn the victim of this degradation” (“Octogesima Adveniens,” 21). St. John Paul II and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI furthered the cause for ecological preservation in their papacies, and the primary focus of Pope Francis’ second encyclical (“Laudato Si’ “) is our moral obligation to care for creation and respond to climate change.

Perhaps nowhere is the evidence of humankind’s abuse of the environment more apparent than the Amazon rain forest. Often referred to as “the earth’s lungs,” this vibrant and diverse ecosystem is facing an epic crisis. By 2018, after decades of deforestation, about 17 percent of the rain forest had been destroyed, primarily to make way for lucrative cattle ranches. The “slash-and-burn” method of deforesting has led to ongoing wildfires in the region. Following the discovery of fossil fuel reservoirs in the 1970s, it has been an uphill battle for many indigenous groups to keep oil companies from entering the Amazon and destroying more forest by building roads and setting up drill sites.

The Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon Region that met last October made a strong link between poverty of people and poverty of the earth. Part of the final document of the synod reads, “Listening to the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor and of the peoples of the Amazon with whom we walk, calls us to a true integral conversion, to a simple and modest style of life, all nourished by a mystical spirituality in the style of St. Francis of Assisi, a model of integral conversion lived with Christian happiness and joy” (17).

Caring for creation doesn’t have an impact only on those living in poverty who work the land; it’s intertwined with the ongoing conversions that are a part of all of our faith journeys. If we allow ourselves to be moved by the “cry of the earth” this Lent, we may find our faith transformed come Easter Sunday and our appreciation for the environment deepened 10 days later on Earth Day (April 22).

Practicing What We Preach

The immense problems facing the environment are on a global scale, and, considering the size and complexity of the crisis, we might be tempted to simply give up before even trying. We need to be patient with ourselves—and with others—as we find out what’s within our sphere of influence. Starting small is always OK. Lent is a long holy season, so it’s helpful to break it down into manageable chunks.

Set recurring reminders on your phone to offer up a quick prayer for our earth. It could be a prayer of gratitude, for solidarity with the 700 million people struggling with water scarcity, or a few lines from St. Francis’ Canticle of the Sun. With a calendar at hand, try making some weekly goals that you hope to reach by the six Sundays that fall within Lent. For example, if you already recycle, why not take the next step and start composting? By spring, you might have enough compost to use in a garden or flower bed.

Money holds many of us back from happiness and holiness. Letting go of some in the form of a donation is a very Lenten exercise. Organizations such as the Catholic Climate Covenant (CatholicClimateCovenant.org) and Poverty USA (PovertyUSA.org) are great educational resources that also make donating easy.

Pope Francis wrote in “Laudato Si’ ” about the environmental crisis, “A great cultural, spiritual, and educational challenge stands before us, and it will demand that we set out on the long path of renewal” (202). Taking to heart the pope’s words, what better time to take up that journey than the solemn, soul-searching season of Lent?

Filled with passion and energy, 85-year-old Father Ruskin Piedra works tirelessly to support and defend the immigrant community in his Brooklyn parish.

If there is glamour in being an immigration rights lawyer, it’s not evident in an eighth-floor waiting room in Lower Manhattan for those seeking authorization to stay in the United States. The nondescript room is set aside for immigrants from Brooklyn. It is half empty, with only a few dozen people waiting to be called this particular winter morning. Amid the conversational sounds of Chinese, Russian, and Spanish, the television set blares a speech from the president of the United States presented the night before, blaming immigrants for murders, rapes, and drug dealing.

“The president tries to paint the immigrants as vicious, violent criminals,” says a commentator on New York One, an all-news station.

Among this tiny composite of New York immigrants, no one appears to share the outrage, to be insulted, or, for that matter, to be paying much attention.

A priest strides in, dressed in full collar, accompanied by a Mexican couple and their college-age daughter. The priest, Redemptorist Father Ruskin Piedra, a wiry, diminutive octogenarian not much more than 5 feet tall, brings the family to the proper line. They get their ticket, and they wait. Father Piedra knows where to go. At the age of 85, he’s been doing this for decades, navigating the labyrinth of immigration bureaucracy for immigrants in Brooklyn as an officially recognized lawyer in the system.

“He is amazing,” says Eduardo, a Mexican immigrant who has been in Brooklyn for more than 20 years, and the husband/father of the family Father Piedra is accompanying this morning. “He’s working hard for the community. He is very friendly and responsive.”

Eduardo is a member of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in the Sunset Park neighborhood. It is a place spared much of the turmoil of Brooklyn gentrification, which has displaced tenants in favor of wealthy newcomers throughout the borough. The neighborhood remains in large part what it has always been, an immigrant enclave.

Eduardo is looking for a way to regularize his situation. His daughter Caroline, born in the United States and an American citizen, is a student at Brooklyn College. She is sponsoring her family, which includes Eduardo, her mother, and a younger brother.

The waiting room has the apparent urgency of a motor vehicle office. There is a studied blas é attitude among the clients and their advocates, many of whom have been here before. But for Eduardo, it could prove to be the most important interview of his life.

“What does this mean?” he is asked.

“Everything,” he says. He came to the United States when he was 18. He is now 46. Getting legal authorization would allow him to see his family in Mexico. A full generation has come and gone, and he can only communicate electronically. He would like to see his mother and father before they die. Time is not a friend.

A Stalwart of Support

In his way, Eduardo stands in a long Brooklyn Catholic tradition. For 126 years, Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish has served them all: Irish, Germans, even Norwegians, and, in the past few decades, a growing group of Chinese. Mass at the parish is now celebrated in English, Spanish, and Chinese. Since the 1990s, Father Piedra, in his tiny office at what is called the St. Juan Neumann Center overlooking the parochial school gym, has been advocating for immigrants. He formally established the center in 2003.

While not a full-fledged lawyer, he has credentials, earned via classes on immigration law and the federal system, to advocate in court for those seeking legal status. In much of the outside world, the status of priest may have lost much of its social impact, but Father Piedra says the Church connection is a help to his cases.

“They pay a lot of attention to Church-related evidence,” says the priest about those charged with carrying out the nation’s immigration laws. “This is a Church with a history. We didn’t just put up a sign.”

Church documents, such as baptismal and marriage certificates, can be used as evidence of an immigrant’s residence in the country. They can all be helpful, even in this era of a crackdown on entering the country. The US Citizenship and Immigration Service’s official mission statement once described its role as fulfilling the ideal of America’s position as “a nation of immigrants.” It no longer uses that language—now it’s about enforcing the law.

Rooted in Service

It’s another series of obstacles for Father Piedra, who speaks in the characteristic gravelly tone of a native New Yorker. Born in what was then called Spanish Harlem, now East Harlem, he has lived the immigrant experience. He speaks little about himself, and much about his immigrant clients. But when he talks, he offers hints about how this passion developed.

His family came to New York from Cuba in 1918, to a nation less prosperous but more open to newcomers. (Laws severely restricting immigration would be enacted six years later during another wave of anti-immigrant sentiment that swept the country.) His Spanish first name is Sabino, and his parents, new to the country, picked out Ruskin from a newspaper article, thinking it sounded authoritatively American, he says. He is one of eight siblings, half, like him, born in the United States, the other half in Cuba.

As a result, he speaks fluent Spanish and has an innate awareness of Latino culture, particularly that from the Caribbean. He was an altar boy at St. Cecilia Church in Manhattan and was inspired to enter the seminary when, on a family visit to Cuba, he observed a large priest leading a congregation in the rosary, bundled up in wool vestments and sweating in the tropical heat. “Wow, what a sacrifice,” the future priest thought. He wanted to share in that kind of dedication.

Father Piedra’s vocation, therefore, grew out of his personal experience, both growing up in immigrant Spanish Harlem with his Cuban family, and later through his early priesthood work in missions in Puerto Rico and Florida. Since 1962, he has been working with immigrants, first assisting those fleeing Castro’s Cuba, and years later earning his advocate credentials in 1998.

Five years later, he established the St. Juan Neumann Center, named for the Redemptorist founder and bishop from Bohemia in central Europe, John Neumann, who came to the United States in 1833 as a seminarian versed in 11 languages and ready to minister to a burgeoning immigrant Catholic population in the New World. The story goes that Neumann learned his final language, Spanish, from a Mexican boat worker he met on the ship over to the United States. He later became the archbishop of Philadelphia.

Neumann’s immigrant legacy earned him accolades and, eventually, canonization. But Father Piedra, who follows that legacy, knows that immigration has emerged as a volatile issue, even among those Catholics who count themselves as descendants of the immigrants served by the first US Redemptorists.

“You can’t let everyone in,” Father Piedra hears from his network of friends outside the immigrant community, nurtured through his years as a retreat master and parish mission director. His response: “How about treating them as children of God?”

He remains bound by the charism of his religious community “to work for the poor and the most abandoned souls.” In today’s United States, he says, it is clear that migrants are the best fit for the category of poor and abandoned.

That Redemptorist charism follows closely the line articulated by Pope Francis. It is a religious community dedicated to reaching the marginalized and the poor. As the pope has pointed out frequently, few on the periphery are in greater need of the Church’s care and concern than undocumented immigrants, both in Europe and in the United States.

Tireless Crusader

“Immigrants are the ones. That’s why we are in this work,” Father Piedra says during a break from the unceasing cascade of immigrant appointments.

He works from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on immigration, with Friday his day off. The modest office includes Father Piedra and three coworkers. At night, he joins with his fellow Redemptorist priests in ministering to the parish. Those are long days and nights for a man more than a decade beyond the normal priest retirement age.

“I am not a person who wants to sit here and twiddle his thumbs,” he says about his hectic schedule and his reluctance to retire. There is little time for thumb twiddling.

Some of his time is spent in community meetings, offering immigrants an opportunity to learn their legal options. A few days a week he takes the subway to Lower Manhattan to advocate in court as well as in meetings with immigration workers. To cover all these services, he raises funds via the Redemptorist network.

Much of his time is spent amid the grind of government forms, evidence, and proof—a daunting obstacle of red tape and regulations even for those familiar with American culture and the English language. At the side of his desk are old-fashioned paper files with volumes of documentation on pending cases: stories wrapped in notes about rent receipts, birth certificates, and utility bills—all intended to prove an immigrant’s whereabouts through the years. For his clients, his services are absolutely essential. Almost everyone lives at poverty levels, so his services are free. When a case is won, sometimes a grateful immigrant will provide a donation of gratitude.

Frequently, nothing can be done. The parish regularly offers funeral services for immigrant family members who died in Latin America. They are unable to travel to their home countries, permanently separated from loved ones.

Most of his clients are Latinos. But one of the first cases in the Neumann office involved an Irishman seeking a work permit. There is the occasional Chinese immigrant seeking assistance, as well as Gypsies from Romania, perhaps the most persecuted group in Europe through the centuries, seeking political asylum. They were persecuted by the Nazis and other regimes. A judge in the system was inclined to support Gypsy claims.

“She retired, much to my chagrin,” says Father Piedra, lamenting how slight shifts in the system can have such an impact on people’s lives.

There are success stories too. Father Piedra is proud that he was able to assist a woman from Ecuador. She was married to a police officer who beat her up and chained her to a bedpost, forcing her to serve the prostitutes he would bring home. After one failed escape attempt, her husband’s beating resulted in the death of her unborn child. Being married to an abusive police officer, she had no legal recourse in Ecuador and fled. She was able to win asylum. However, such cases, borne out of domestic violence situations, are now officially not considered in asylum requests.

All in all, the system is getting more callous, in the eyes of Father Piedra. There are more bureaucratic tangles. A woman who applied for citizenship, thinking it was going to happen, had her green card expire. Now she is in legal limbo. Food stamps for the families of immigrants used to be granted as a way to feed children, who are often American citizens. But that is now being routinely denied. A Brazilian woman applying for citizenship had her visa stamp scrutinized. It took months to authenticate it.

About 80 percent of asylum requests are now being denied. One client from El Salvador testified to the murder of his sister, the girlfriend of a gang member. When he was told he was next, he fled. His case for asylum is under consideration, but the odds are increasing that it will be denied.

Immigrants fear the 4 a.m. knock on the door from ICE officials more than ever, says Father Piedra, as the government increases its enforcement of immigration laws, even for those whose only legal offense is having come to the country in the first place. Sometimes a main suspect, who might be a prime subject for deportation because of previous convictions, is caught, along with others who were in the vicinity and would never have been a target otherwise.

‘Wisdom Figure’

Through these obstacles, Father Piedra’s fellow Redemptorist priests who work with him at Our Lady of Perpetual Help admire his steadfastness and determination. Father James Gilmour, the pastor, has known Father Piedra for the past two decades in Brooklyn. “He is very loved,” says Father Gilmour about his fellow priest. “He is very venerated in the community.”

At Our Lady of Perpetual Help, which looms over the neighborhood of apartments, storefronts, and subdivided homes, Father Piedra’s work flows seamlessly from the mission of the parish. There are about 1,500 registered families, but more than 3,000 attend weekend liturgies. As in many immigrant communities, there is a reluctance to register, for fear that proof of their presence can be held against them. Father Piedra offers a consoling figure in a frightened community.

Every morning, Father Piedra finds time for private prayer. Perhaps from that source, he has been able to replenish his work with immigrants, often a long slog, and sometimes comes up against insurmountable obstacles.

“He is a very calm, tranquil, compassionate, and understanding person. He advocates. But he won’t be shouting into a bullhorn,” says Father Francis Mulvaney, the rector of the Redemptorist community at Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Father Piedra “is a wisdom figure” in the Sunset Park immigrant community, adds Father Mulvaney.

Occasionally, Father Piedra will take to the streets in immigrant demonstrations. At one, quoted in the Brooklyn Tablet, the diocesan newspaper, Father Piedra made no apologies for helping the most peripheral people, those without documents. “I haven’t met one single criminal,” he told the Tablet about the thousands of immigrants who have come to his office seeking help. “I’m not saying they don’t exist, I’m not saying they don’t sneak in, I’m saying I’m not aware of them.”

The president of the United States might disagree, but Father Piedra, the man with experience in the field, argues that those who come to him in Brooklyn “are decent, honest, loving family people wanting a better life and fleeing persecution.” They are God’s children, he will argue, and deserve the love and consideration owed to any other person on the planet. It is a radical idea at the heart of Christian dogma—backed up by the Gospels and the pope—that Father Piedra, fighting this battle into his 80s, is not giving up on, even when it is not glamorous, popular, or even ultimately successful.

“That, to me, is Christianity,” he says, looking around his office. “The people here are children of God.”