CV NEWS FEED // In a recent column published in the Southern Nebraska Register, a Catholic priest shared the real “problems” that illegal immigrants bring to him.
Pastor and Hispanic Minister at Holy Family in Heartwell, Nebraska, Fr Evan Winter asserted that violence, poverty, and hardship were not the issues that illegal migrants were most concerned about.
“There’s often another suffering that burdens these people,” he wrote, adding:
When these people talk about what really weighs them down, they talk about the wounds that result from breaches of the sixth and ninth commandments. They talk about the times when someone they love sinned against marriage.
Absent fathers, promiscuous mothers, wayward children, deviant relatives, unfaithful spouses, unfaithful selves: these things cause as much suffering, if not more, than the violence and poverty that these people are fleeing. And they carry these wounds wherever they go.
Though Winter noted these issues are not specific to the Hispanic community or those who migrate to the US illegally, he pointed out that “these pains are mentioned so often” among people fleeing from violence and poverty.
Winter observed that sin among migrants has “very clear victims,” especially with respect to adultery. Sins against marriage, which “the world most frantically wants to do away with,” he said, have increasingly dire consequences among the migrant community.
He continued:
Talk to the emotionally handicapped immigrant who was lonely half the year because his mother was too busy with other men to care and their father lived hours away.
Talk to the overwhelmed immigrant left to take care of four or five kids because her spouse left. Talk to the ashamed and regretful immigrant who feels this way because the kids they left now want nothing to do with them.
Concluding, the priest stated that hope is present among migrants in the Sacrament of Confession, even if “experiences of healing and deep personal prayer don’t necessarily make everything perfect.”
