reform

4-16-2014
Boston's Cardinal Sean O'Malley, the closest American prelate to Pope Francis, took nine other bishops to the Mexican-American border for three days of listening to the stories of people who are suffering from America's horribly broken immigration system. The bishops celebrated a dramatic mass with hundreds of Mexicans, taking communion through slats in the security fence, and laid a wreath at the border commemorating the estimated 6,000 people who have died trying to cross.
Jim Wallis 4-10-2014
Courtesy Fast4Families

Fast4Families fasters pray with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Courtesy Fast4Families

Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the closest American prelate to Pope Francis, took nine other bishops to the Mexican-American border for three days of listening to the stories of people who are suffering from America’s horribly broken immigration system. The bishops celebrated a dramatic mass with hundreds of Mexicans, taking communion through slats in the security fence, and laid a wreath at the border commemorating the estimated 6000 people who have died trying to cross. 

“We can no longer tolerate the suffering caused by a broken system,” the Cardinal said. “The suffering and death must end.” 

When asked how important immigration reform now is to the Catholic Church, O’Malley replied, “It’s another pro-life issue.” 

Indeed it is.

4-10-2014
Kara Lofton/Sojourners

Jim Wallis Speaks at Fast for Families Rally. Kara Lofton/Sojourners

Washington, D.C.—The national “Fast for Families Across America” bus tour campaign ended  their journey yesterday in front of the U.S. Capitol building on the National Mall where hundreds gathered in support.

The buses, which returned to Washington after covering more than 90 congressional districts during a seven week tour, joined a female immigration advocacy group, We Belong Together—Women for Commonsense Immigration Reform, whose members have been fasting and praying for the House to pass reform that’s needed to keep their families together.

4-07-2014
Last November, Fast for Families drew national attention when some of its leaders and supporters fasted for 22 days in a tent near the U.S. Capitol. Lisa Sharon Harper, of Sojourners, a Washington social justice group, was one of them and was on the bus Wednesday. She grew up in Philadelphia.
4-07-2014
“We’ve been calling on people to fast because now is the time,” said Lisa Sharon Harper (at lectern in photo), who works for the DC-based Sojourners.
4-07-2014
Jim Wallis, the president and founder of Sojourners, reiterated that fact in a Time.com op-ed, writing: "Young people, who came here as children, live as 'illegals' in the only country they have ever known as home."
Ivone Guillen 3-25-2014

While many members of Congress are waiting for the primary season to be over before they make any solid decision on immigration reform, a recent New American Economy poll shows conservative members on Congress have little to worry about.

“The results cut against Republican concerns that passing immigration reform will keep their base voters away from the polls this fall, and indicates that the economy and the health care reform law are the key issues driving voters.”

Read full article here.

Stacey Schwenker 3-21-2014
Stacey Schwenker/Sojourners

The Immigration Reform Now rally. Stacey Schwenker/Sojourners

I don’t know what came over me. Was it what Noel Castellanos (CEO of CCDA) had said? What Jim Wallis (President of Sojourners) had said? Perhaps. I couldn’t keep the tears from coming. Walking up Broadway Street in Los Angeles in the middle of a Saturday afternoon as a crowd of people blew horns, held signs, and chanted, “Immigration reform now,” I wept. It was because of Ivone. I was even wearing my Faith is Greater Than Fear shirt but lurking along the sidewalk, not intending to get involved. But it's too late for that. I love Ivone like a sister, I’m already knee deep in it.

Jim, Noel, and Jenny Yang (World Relief) had just been speaking on a panel at the Justice Conference about immigration reform. Jim said that we had to pass comprehensive immigration reform now, before the summer recess. And I knew in my heart that he was right. Because if we don’t, then Ivone will continue to lie in limbo along with 11 million other aspiring Americans, perhaps being deported in a couple of years. We will both continue to live in uncertainty and fear.

Rev. Eunsang Lee 3-18-2014
Courtesy Fast for Families

Vice President Joe Biden visits the Fast for Families tent in November. Courtesy Fast for Families

I became a member of Young Koreans United (YKU), a Korean American grassroots group providing solidarity to the people’s movement for democracy, human rights, and reunification of Korea in 1986. YKU was instrumental in forming the National Korean American Service & Education Consortium (NAKASEC); established 20 years ago to build a progressive Korean American voice on major civil rights issues. I joined the NAKASEC board a few years back. Throughout this time, I have tried to provide a clergy presence whenever I can to show that ending the suffering of immigrant families, including that of the 1 out of 7 undocumented Korean Americans, is also a concern of persons of faith.

3-18-2014
High profile leaders such as SEIU labor organizer Eliseo Medina and faith leader Jim Wallis of Sojourners were among those fasting.
3-12-2014
3. The “Fast for Families” participants mobilize on behalf of immigration reform legislation. Of the various faith-led protests for immigration reform in 2013, few garnered as much attention as the “Fast for Families” campaign. Organized as a partnership between labor groups, religious organizations, and immigration advocates, a rotating band of participants fasted for weeks in a tent on the National Mall to pressure the House of Representatives to pass comprehensive immigration reform legislation. Led by the storied labor organizer Eliseo Medina, fasters hailed from a variety of professions and backgrounds and included several undocumented immigrants and DREAMers. But organizers also listed a fair number of high-profile religious leaders as participants, such as Gabriel Salguero, president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition; Sister Simone Campbell, the executive director of NETWORK; Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism; and Jim Wallis, president of Sojourners.

A Swiss Guard salutes Pope Francis and cardinals. Photo by Paul Haring, courtesy Catholic News Service. Via RNS.

Figuring out why Pope Francis has upended so many expectations, how exactly he’s changed the Catholic Church in his first year and what he might be contemplating for the future has become a Catholic parlor game that is almost as popular as the pontiff himself.

A single key can best answer all of these questions: Francis’ longstanding identity as a Jesuit priest.

It’s an all-encompassing personal and professional definition that the former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio brought with him from Buenos Aires, and one that continues to shape almost everything he does as Pope Francis.

“He may act like a Franciscan but he thinks like a Jesuit,” quipped the Rev. Thomas Reese, a fellow Jesuit who is a columnist for National Catholic Reporter.

Pope Francis greets the crowd at his general audience in St. Peter's Square. Photo by Paul Haring/Catholic News Service

As Pope Francis approaches the one-year mark of his papacy, his global flock and a fascinated public are starting to measure the changes he is making against the sky-high hopes for transforming an institution many thought impervious to change.

Every personnel move and every new proposal is being scrutinized for what it might indicate about the direction of the church, what it might augur about possible adjustments to church teaching and whether the aspirations of so many will be fulfilled — or frustrated.

But as important as such structural and policy moves can be, church leaders and Vatican insiders say the 77-year-old Francis is really focused on a more ambitious (and perhaps more difficult) goal: overhauling and upending the institutional culture of Catholicism.

Francis, they say, is bent on converting the church, as it were, so that the faith is positioned to flourish in the future no matter who follows him to the throne of St. Peter.

3-05-2014
Responding to Bishop DiMarzio, Jim Wallis, president of Sojourners, said, “we also say it’s a Gospel issue. I know for Evangelicals, we’ve been converted by [the Gospel of] Matthew [Chapter] 25, and realize now that how we treat 11 million undocumented people is how we treat Christ himself. This for us is a Gospel issue.”
3-03-2014
Jim Wallis, president of Sojourners, a Christian social-justice organization, is convinced that reform is inevitable. “Immigration reform is going to pass — there’s no doubt about that. We’re not going to deport 11 million people,” he said. “The question is, how much longer must we wait, and how much more suffering will be inflicted on so many more people?” The next weeks and months will be filled with renewed activity, as a coalition of law-enforcement officials, the faith community and business and labor groups come together to get reform across the finish line, he said. “Washington, D.C., is the most dysfunctional city in the country. We’re known for our political conflict. Immigration reform has the chance to really be an exception — an exception to our practices of political conflict,” he added. “We’ll fix our politics by fixing our broken immigration system.”
3-03-2014
"With a strong majority of Americans, including evangelicals, wanting leaders to fix our broken immigration system, immigration reform is going to happen. The only question is how many families will be broken up and how much our communities have to suffer until Washington acts," Sojourners President Jim Wallis, who is part of the Evangelical Immigration Table, told The Christian Post on Thursday.
2-28-2014
"Even if we have different political sensibilities, we are united around this cause," said Jim Wallis, president of Sojourners and a leader of the Evangelical Immigration Table.
2-28-2014
Jim Wallis, editor and founder of the evangelical magazine Sojourners, NAILS IT:
2-28-2014
“I can think of no better way to stand in solidarity with Jesus during this Lenten season than to stand with immigrant families, said Sojourner’s Senior Director of Mobilizing Lisa Sharon Harper. “Now is the time for common sense immigration reform. Now is the time for Congress to do right by 11 million of the most vulnerable people in our land. This is why we fast.”
2-28-2014
“I can think of no better way to stand in solidarity with Jesus during Lent than to stand in solidarity with immigrant families,” said Lisa Sharon Harper, senior mobilizing director for the Christian organization Sojourners.