Writing a picture - Look inside migrant concentration camps

Published in The National Catholic Reporter

If it weren't for the white boxes shielding the faces of dozens of men and women stuffed into the overcrowded cell, it would be difficult to count the people in the photograph, since their overlapping limbs make it impossible to see where one body ends and another begins.

But the descriptions in the accompanying report, released last month by the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, provide illuminating details: 76 people in a cell designed for 12; 155 people in a cell designed for 35; 41 in a cell for eight; 900 people total, or more than seven times the 125-person capacity of the El Paso Del Norte immigration processing center.

During surprise inspections, officials found people standing on toilets just to find air to breathe and detainees crammed in standing-room only cells for weeks, with limited access to showers or clean clothes — risking not only the health and safety of the detainees, but of agents and officers as well, the report said.

The "dangerous overcrowding" required "immediate action," the report said, warning about the spread of illness and concerns that "rising tensions among detainees could turn violent."

Other reports in past weeks have revealed that mentally ill detainees are being held in solitary confinement, and that lack of medical care is responsible for suicides and other deaths of detainees.

Two days after the report's release, a 25-year-old asylum-seeker died in a Texas hospital after nearly six weeks in custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, bringing the total to at least 24 deaths while in custody or shortly after release, plus at least five deaths of children in other detention facilities during the Trump administration.

While these numbers are actually lower than some previous years, they are expected to rise as detentions are mushrooming to a record high. As of early June, ICE was detaining more than 52,500 people a day in more than 200 detention centers, some 300,000 to 500,000 individuals per year, according to an ICE statement to NBC. Just this week, President Donald Trump and his new ICE acting director Mark Morgan have said they plan to increase large-scale raids and arrests.

The administration also announced this month that it will be eliminating education, recreation and legal services for unaccompanied migrant children in U.S. custody — those children separated from their families and held in cages that so horrified most Americans last year at this time.

Since then, many of us have gotten on with our busy lives, paying perhaps only limited attention to the regular reports about rising numbers and deteriorating conditions for fellow human beings being held by our government.

It's time to stop looking away and to start calling these "centers" or "facilities" what they really are: concentration camps.

A concentration camp involves "mass detention of civilians without trial," says the woman who literally wrote the book on the subject, Andrea Pitzer, author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps.

The concentration camp system, which she traces to 1890s Cuba, introduces a wartime tactic into civil society, essentially declaring martial law, Pitzer told Esquire magazine. The United States used domestic concentration camps during World War II, when it forcibly relocated and incarcerated more than 100,000 citizens of Japanese descent.

Coincidentally — or not — the Trump administration recently announced that some of the nearly 41,000 immigrant children taken into custody this year will be moved to the Fort Sill Army Base in Oklahoma, which was once used as a Japanese internment camp in the 1940s. (The Obama administration also temporarily housed migrants at military bases, including Fort Sill, for four months in 2014.)

To those who balk that current U.S. immigrant detention centers are not like Auschwitz, genocide historians remind that not all concentration camps are extermination camps — and even the latter didn't start that way. Without diminishing the extreme horror of Nazi death camps, more and more commentators — not just Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez —are saying the "concentration camp" term fits in this contemporary case.

"Things can be concentration camps without being Dachau or Auschwitz," Waitman Wade Beorn, a Holocaust and genocide studies historian and a lecturer at the University of Virginia, explained to Esquire. "Concentration camps in general have always been designed — at the most basic level — to separate one group of people from another group. Usually, because the majority group, or the creators of the camp, deem the people they're putting in it to be dangerous or undesirable in some way."

It's important to remember that many of those detained at the U.S./Mexico border are not, in fact, doing anything illegal. They are refugees fleeing violence and persecution in their native countries, who are fully within international and U.S. law to present themselves at the border to seek asylum. That's not to mention that U.S. foreign policies bear significant responsibility for the crumbling conditions in their home countries.

Although mass detention of immigrants predates the Trump administration, the current president has made it a centerpiece of his agenda and perfected the use of extreme language to dehumanize families fleeing for their lives and safety.

Such dehumanization is always part of concentration camps, according to Jonathan Hyslop, a professor of sociology and anthropology at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, who wrote an article on "The Invention of the Concentration Camp: Cuba, Southern Africa and the Philippines, 1896-1907."

"It's important here to look at the language that people are using," Hyslop said. "As soon as you get people comparing other groups to animals or insects, or using language about advancing hordes, and we're being overrun and flooded and this sort of thing, it's creating the sense of this enormous threat. And that makes it much easier to sell to people on the idea we've got to do something drastic to control this population which [is] going to destroy us."

At a rally in Florida last month, Trump was bemoaning migrants' legal protections when someone in the audience suggested they should be shot. The president laughed and made a joke.

Experts say concentration camps — through overcrowding and dehumanization — actually become self-fulfilling prophecies. The culture of abuse leads to frustration and violence, thus "justifying" their incarceration after the fact.

Other citizens — that's us — become increasingly desensitized to the dehumanization of a group of people and thus implicitly give approval for concentration camps by our lack of push back.

But our faith — if not our humanity — calls us to see and protect the God-given dignity in all people. Catholic social teaching compels us not to look away, but rather to advocate for the oppressed.

Theologian Nichole Flores, speaking at a recent conference on the common good at St. Mary's College in Notre Dame, Indiana, reminded Catholics of their moral obligation of solidarity with migrants at the border because we are "connected to each other in Christ."

"Their struggle is our struggle. Their joy is our joy. Their babies are our babies. Their families are our families," said Flores, assistant professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia.

Flores didn't use the term "concentration camp," but she clearly called U.S. treatment of migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers — including the separation of children from their parents — "an anti-life policy."

Opposing concentration camps should be a pro-life priority. We cannot look away.
A version of this story appeared in the June 28-July 11, 2019 print issue under the headline: Don't look away from concentration camps .

Msgr. Stuart Swetland- from Annapolis to Catholic ethicist

A Missouri ecclesiastic speaks on morality and war

KANSAS CITY, KAN.

Msgr. Stuart Swetland, a boyish 57, sits behind a desk arrangement stacked on three sides with papers and books, some appearing on the verge of avalanche, in the president's office of Donnelly College in Kansas City.

Msgr. Stuart Swetland in National Catholic Reporter

Swetland has been president since 2014, of this college that historically has served immigrants and minorities, but that fact is, in many ways, entwined with a life of conversions that often leads him to straddle boundaries that others might view as impermeable.

He has a proclivity, borne out in extensive writing for mostly conservative publications such as the National Catholic Register, for taking some of the most difficult sayings of the Gospel at face value and allowing them to invade his consideration of the Christian life, no matter how disturbing to him or his audience.

His 42-page-long curriculum vitae outlines an academic career that includes the U.S. Naval Academy; Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar; an advanced degree in theology from Mount St. Mary's Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md., and two others from Rome's Lateran University through the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in Washington, D.C.; and a doctorate in Catholic social teaching.

We met in March on the campus to talk about his military experience, his conversion to Catholicism more than three decades ago and how that affected his thinking on such issues as the use of force and modern weaponry.

Msgr Swetland detailed moments throughout his Navy career when conscience demanded he think deeply about ethical issues arising from the requirements of his position that have led, in more recent years, to deep questions about the militarism of the current era.

Pushing religion aside, Swetland was born in Pittsburgh, the son of "typical 'city of Man, city of God' Lutherans" for whom service was integral to faith.

"The verse that was probably drilled into my head the most was 'Unto whom much is given, much is expected.' You're expected to give back and so one of the ways to give back was through the military."

He was 18, he wanted to go to a good school to be a science major "and we don't have a whole lot of money, and the military academy is offering to pay for it, so there's a little bit of mercenary in there, I think. But nobody stays at the academy for those reasons because it's too difficult."

In a long autobiographical piece he wrote in 2011 for the Coming Home Network, he revealed that the U.S. Naval Academy told his parents that he probably didn't have the academic heft to make it, so they shouldn't expect much.

"But I was born stubborn, so I needed to hear no more." He majored in physics, graduated first in his class and won the Rhodes scholarship.

He wasn't so fortunate in religion. When he left his Lutheran church in Pennsylvania, one his family had helped found, the congregation gave him a grand sendoff with a going-away blessing.

At Annapolis, he attended a fairly generic Protestant service that he "didn't find comforting or challenging" so he went looking for a "civilian" church.

It was the mid-1970s, end of the Vietnam era, and when he showed up at a local Lutheran church in uniform, he had the distinct feeling he wasn't welcome.

In fact, his instincts were correct. After a few weeks, he said, some members told him that he had happened upon a "peace church" and that they didn't want him showing up in uniform. The academy required he wear it, so that ended his attendance.

It was not the last time that he would encounter members of the same church, professing the same faith and reading the same Bible, coming to radically different conclusions.

The result at the time was an 18-year-old who pushed religion aside. He "bracketed" the basic claims of the faith, "dismissing Christianity as a religion that was hopelessly confused."

He plunged into his studies and found himself at Oxford in October 1981.

He was encouraged by former Rhodes scholars from the Navy to move from science and begin formal study to investigate the moral and ethical questions that had captured his imagination from an early age. 

They convinced him to study politics, philosophy and economics.


Later, with the memory of the 1960s My Lai massacre in Vietnam still vivid in military circles and with a growing understanding of the effects of war on young military members, he was tapped, because of his work in philosophy and ethics, to teach military ethics to Navy recruits.

Faith returns at Oxford

If religion had been pushed to the side at the naval academy, it came roaring back at him at Oxford.

This Protestant who, according to his written testimony, had at several points in his life given himself over to Christ, now began a deep examination of the basic assumptions of the Christian faith, beginning with "Did Jesus exist?" and "Did he really rise?"

The questions led to an intense study of the biblical texts, bolstered by the memories of childhood faith and the conviction that "on some level of my being, I knew that I had encountered the living God in my life." His journey continued, first through an evangelical Anglican church in Oxford and, ultimately, as he continued studying, a growing conviction about the truth of the Catholic church and what it teaches.

"I had come to believe," he wrote for the Coming Home Network, "that the church was who she claimed to be. The fact that I still had difficulties with some of her teachings didn't really matter. As [John Henry] Newman said, 'Ten thousand difficulties do not make for one doubt.' "

While all of that was going on, he had fallen in with a small group of young intellectuals and was having dinner regularly with them, four of whom were active Catholics.

One of them in the group was Dermot Quinn, now teaching at Seton Hall University, and another was Robert George, a high-profile conservative Catholic and McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University. Swetland writes that the friends helped him work through all the "inherited" anti-Catholic prejudice "of a typical evangelical Protestant."

Robert George, in a phone interview, recalled that the group regularly engaged -- over single-malt Scotch that Swetland was able to procure from a nearby commissary "for a song" -- in long discussions of ideas. No matter where they started, whether in sociology, history, ethics or philosophy, "ineluctably, we would end up at religion. And Stuart, whether as devil's advocate or out of sincere conviction -- I to this day do not know -- was a fierce defender of the Lutheran Reformation."

The nightly debates went on for months. According to George, Swetland gave his dinner companions no indication that his mind was turning in a new direction until, one day on the streets of Oxford, they happened to meet up, one leaving the university, the other returning. In response to George's question, "Where are you coming from?", Swetland answered, "The Catholic chaplaincy at Rose Place. I've decided to seek reception into the Catholic church."

"You could have knocked me over with a feather," said George. "I was stunned. There was no gradual wearing down of the Protestant defenses that I could perceive," he said with a laugh.

Swetland asked him to be his sponsor -- in effect, his godfather -- and, while considering it a great honor, George's first reaction, he said, chuckling at the recollection, was to ask him, "Are you sure you know what you're doing here? You know you've got to actually believe all this stuff you've been denying for the past several months."

Swetland became a member of the Catholic church before his graduation from Oxford in 1984.

Soon after, he was aboard the destroyer USS Kidd in the Aegean Sea heading for Haifa, Israel, when the ship received reports that a TWA flight had been hijacked to Beirut by members of the terrorist group Islamic Jihad. Among those on board were five Navy divers, including a shipmate whom Swetland would soon learn had been tortured and shot in the head.

President Ronald Reagan decided to respond quickly and Swetland was called on to command a small boat that would, at high speed, pick up Navy Seals who were going to create a diversion ashore to draw the enemy's fire before swimming out to sea. He was told that there was a more than 50-50 chance of casualties.

He wrote that a great anger took hold of him and it quickly turned to hatred toward those who killed his shipmate. "I was glad I had been chosen for this mission, even though it put my life in danger. I wanted to kill the terrorists who had killed" his friend.

Ultimately, the mission was called off and he was left with himself and his hatred. But even before that occurred, he had begun to pray the rosary that he had recently learned.

"As I prayed, the words of the Our Father struck me as never before," he wrote in his autobiographical piece. " 'Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.' Forgive? How could God possibly ask me to forgive the thugs who had tortured and killed a brave American sailor?"

He searched for the loopholes only to come to the conclusion: "The gospel of Jesus Christ is true, and it does not admit of exceptions. If I had died that night," he wrote in 2011, "my salvation would have been in jeopardy. I had hated those terrorists from my heart. I wanted them dead."

Before that night was over, he said he had "another conversion: I learned the meaning of mercy, forgiveness, and love." Floating around the Aegean, "God gave me the actual grace -- the supernatural power -- to help me let go of my hatred and wrath."

He is convinced that it was the grace he had received in becoming Catholic that was at work. He was, he wrote, "saved from myself" and the "conversion from hatred to love -- one of many in my life -- brought me closer to discovering my call to the priesthood."

The episode is illustrative of both the seriousness with which Swetland embraces his Catholicism and of the seriousness with which, at times, he challenges his own presumptions.

Rethinking war

It may also be such seriousness that is behind his belief that the post-Cold-War era is summoning the church, especially the church in the United States, to rethink some fundamental points about war.

The opinion has roots in another Navy experience, much earlier than the episode in the Aegean. It occurred when he was deployed to a ballistic missile submarine for the summer as a midshipman. It was the first time the young cadet confronted questions about the wisdom and morality of nuclear deterrence.

For someone regularly pestered by big ethical issues, the questions were unavoidable: The sub carried 16 missiles, each with the potential to have 10 warheads and each of them could be targeted independently.

Each warhead, he said, was 10 to 30 times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II. "So you do the math, and you could destroy up to 160 cities, which for all practical purposes was the whole of the Soviet Union at the time."

"We were handmaidens to the doomsday machine," he said. "Every day we practiced for a football game we'd never play and if we ever did play, we'd already lost."

Deterrence only works, he said, "if you have people who are willing to turn the key and push that button." Otherwise, the weapons aren't a deterrent.

"But then I said, 'Wait a minute, how can we threaten to do what we know is immoral to do?' I wasn't a Catholic. I wasn't even thinking about becoming a Catholic, but I was reading a lot of philosophy, and most moral philosophy would say your intention has a lot to do with the morality of the act, and is determinative. … If we have real people who are ready to turn those keys and push those buttons, then we've already formed them to be mass murders. They're just waiting for the conditions to be met. Which is totally external to their choice. It's when they're ordered to do so."

Swetland said he understands "why they pulled their punch" amid the Cold War and because "Pope John Paul II said, 'Well, if you're moving toward disarmament' " then deterrence was at least temporarily acceptable.

There's no need to reinvent the church's position, he said. "All of the moral teaching is there in that document. We just pulled our punch [and allowed for deterrence] in the end because we didn't want to make the logical conclusion from what had been said."

He also would urge the church to push selective conscientious objection. While the military recognizes conscientious objection of religious groups that oppose all war, "one of the things that the American military has never accepted that Catholic social teaching and the standard ethic on war and peace demands," he said, "is the ability of individuals to make selective conscientious objection."

He would also like to see an examination of the role of military chaplains, a rethinking of the American "formal policy requiring unconditional surrender," something the just war theory "has never recognized as a just demand that you can make upon your enemy."

It is difficult terrain, he has come to understand, even when popes are in agreement. His objection to the Iraq War as unjust, for instance, brought stinging rebuke from conservative quarters.

More recently, when he weighed in to counter a disparaging characterization of Islam from some Catholic quarters, he ended up in a debate on Relevant Radio, where he has his own daily show, "Go Ask Your Father," and generated a fair internet storm over the position. That is how, in the belly of a nuclear sub, the summer he turned 20, Swetland came to a conclusion. "I couldn't tell anybody about it or it would have been career-ruining -- that I couldn't do what subs did. So I quietly made the decision I wouldn't be a nuclear submariner."

In time, he decided to leave the Navy career behind. Soon after becoming Catholic, he had thought of becoming a priest, but a priest adviser told him, "That's the zeal of the convert. If it's still there in three years, then you can do something about it."

He went back to serve in the Navy following Oxford, "and three years later it hadn't gone away, so I said, 'Maybe I need to do something about this.' "

Ultimately, he managed to convince the Navy to allow him to pursue the priesthood while still owing the service several years for his time at the academy and at Oxford.

Time to reconsider

Now as a Catholic, a priest and an educator, the questions continue to press. What may have been justified in the 1980s at the apex of the Cold War seems excessive now. By the end of that decade, a major symbol of the war, the Berlin Wall, had fallen and the Soviet empire soon collapsed. What didn't collapse was U.S. spending on defense.

"The timing is perfect," he said, to reconsider the U.S. Catholic church's tolerance for deterrence as outlined in the U.S. bishops' 1983 pastoral letter, "The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response."

The submariner for a summer who had contemplated the worst case believes the United States could send a strong message to the world by reducing military spending. He notes the familiar statistic that the United States spends more on the military than the next six countries combined and that most of those countries are allies.

"China is building up and North Korea, so it's probably Pollyanna-ish to think we can get to an abolition of nuclear weapons, though that would be my dream," he said. "And it's the dream of every pope, conservative, liberal and in between, from John XXIII to Francis. I think our bishops could take a lead on this if they would say, 'Enough! Basta!' "

The influences keeping the military industrial complex functioning at a high level have as much to do with the Pentagon spending that occurs in almost every congressional district as it does with foreign threats. The complex, said Swetland, is aimed at keeping a strong triad -- missiles on subs, missiles on land, and missiles on bombers in the air.

"And now, of course," he adds, "we can launch cruise missiles from almost any platform."

If the U.S. is intent on keeping the triad intact "that's a huge chunk of the budget, just to start with, because these things are not inexpensive to maintain, and we've got a modernization issue coming up. A lot of these weapons systems are getting to the end of their planned usefulness. We have to either update them or refurbish them."

The timing is right, he said, for us to ask, "Do we really need this kind of deterrent, and is it the moral thing to do?"

He asks whether the condition that John Paul II placed on deterrence has been met -- that it is tolerable only if the country is moving toward disarmament. "Let's be honest. Let's get the best minds we have in moral theology, the military, etc., and let's do what we did with the peace pastoral. Let's have a discussion: Is it moral to threaten to kill those we know it's wrong to kill?

"I think I know the answer to that question," he said, "but if we examine that honestly, you know. If we're really serious about being a pro-life church, let's be pro-life and get to the bottom of the question."

[Tom Roberts is NCR editor at large. Video by Traci Badalucco, NCR Bertelsen intern; graphics by Mick Forgey, web editor.]

Catholics oppose Donald Trump

Out of respect to Maine Writer readers, I want to apologize for the horrible spectacle we're witnessing in the presidential 2016 primary elections.  

Three thoughtful and well spoken candidates are being obliterated by the news media, because of Trumposities. Rather than ideas, Donald Trump receives media free air time to degrade minorities, imitate Adolf Hitler, name call his opponents, and sell commodoties in infomercials, like wine, beef and even magazines. On the other hand, Secretary Hillary Clinton, Senator Bernie Sanders and Governor John Kasich are the thoughtful candidates, but the news media only gives them sound bites.  In fact, Secretary Clinton's eloquent post March 8th primary speech was only broadcast on MSNBC-cable network. 

As far as I can see, the following groups are obviously in opposition to Donald Trump's unlikely presidential candidaccy:
1.  Establishement Republicans
2.  Supporters of Governor Mitt Romney
3.  Black caucus voters
4.  Labor Unions
5.  Muslims
6.  Registered Democrats

"..(Trump) ....demagogue and danger to the nation and the Republican Party."- NCRonline.org

Jesus spoke to the Apoltles about how difficult it is to enter the kindgom of Heaven. (Matthew 19:24). Donald Trump certainly doesn't have a spiritual message, but he's somehow mezmerizing his supporters with infomercial style political messages.  Can a rich man enter the Kingdom of Heaven?

"And Jesus said to His disciples, 'Truly I say to you, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24'. Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.' 25When the disciples heard this, they were very astonished and said, 'Then who can be saved?'…" http://biblehub.com/matthew/19-24.htm

Hopefully, Roman Catholic voters can be added to the above list of opposition. Here is an open letter from The National Catholic Reporter on-line:

In an appeal to the voters, 40 conservative Catholic leaders have denounced GOP frontrunner Donald Trump as a demagogue and danger to the nation and the Republican Party.

The open letter appeared in The National Review on March 7, one day before the Michigan Republican primary, which could give Trump an almost-unbeatable delegate lead in the GOP nominating race if he posts a strong win.

Robert P. George, of Princeton University and George Weigel, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, headed the charge, and the appeal was also signed by opinion leaders from academia and religious media.

The letter denounces Trump for "vulgarity, oafishness, shocking ignorance, and -- we do not hesitate to use the word -- demagoguery."

Worse, they wrote, he's the opposite of what Catholics should seek in a leader.  George and Weigel wrote of Trump that there is "nothing in his campaign or his previous record that gives us grounds for confidence that he genuinely shares our commitments to the right to life, to religious freedom and the rights of conscience, to rebuilding the marriage culture, or to … the principle of limited constitutional government."

Those causes have been championed by the GOP, the authors wrote, but a Trump nomination would threaten the party's commitment to those issues.

The appeal, in the pages of the magazine founded by conservative icon author William F. Buckley, Jr., comes less than a month after its editors issued a similar denunciation of Trump in its January edition.

On Jan. 21,Trump fired back on Twitter:

"National Review is a failing publication that has lost it's way. It's circulation is way down w its influence being at an all time low. Sad!"

Ahead of Tuesday's Michigan primary, a new Fox News-funded pre-election poll of likely Republican voters showed the New York billionaire was a popular choice among Catholic voters.

Trump's recent kerfuffle with Pope Francis (who called the candidate's stance on immigration "not Christian") has not dissuaded Catholics.

According to the poll, Trump, with 52 percent of Catholic voters, leads Sen. Marco Rubio (16 percent) Ohio Gov. John Kasich (14 percent) and Sen. Tex Cruz (11 percent) with Catholics.

Although Donald Trump gets to promote his magazine in free infomercials, the National Catholic Reporter doesn't have equal time on progams like The Today Show with Matt Lauer.  

Again, to end, I apologize to Maine Writer readers around the world, about America's convoluted and disappointing presidential primary process and the unlikely outcomes.  Although, I may not be influential, as Donald Trump would likely blast about me, but I am morally opposed to supporting any bomabastic person who is somehow mezmerizing the American electorate.  

Pope Francis should be the focus of world news- not the 24/7 Trump drama

International drama circulates around the highly publicized Donald Trump, the Republican occupation of all things political. All the while, His Holiness, Pope Francis is planning a history visit to Mexico. Given the political issues around Mexican immigration and the horrible problems with illegal drug trafficking into the US, it seems to me the Pope's Mexico visit in February, should receive more news media coverage. Unfortunately, it's not receiving much coverage except from the Catholic press.

National Catholic Reporter is covering the Pope Francis to visit marginalized communities in Mexico, in February by Carol Glatz.

VATICAN CITY- Pope Francis will also visit Cereso state prison while in Mexico

Pope Francis will visit some of the most marginalized communities in Mexico and seek to bring hope to a country suffering from crime, corruption and inequality when he visits Feb. 12-17.

Francis will stop in six cities, including two in the state of Chiapas and -- across from El Paso, Texas -- Ciudad Juárez, which just five years ago was considered the "murder capital of the world" as drug cartels disputed a trafficking corridor.

The Pope said in November, that he wanted to visit cities where St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI never went. (Given how Pope Francis is a native of Argentina, he is liekly very comfortable going into barios).

But he said he will stop at the capital of Mexico City to pray at the Our Lady of Guadalupe.

"But if it wasn't for Our Lady," he wouldn't go there, he told reporters.

The Pope will fly out of and return to Mexico City each day after celebrating Mass at the basilica on the second day of his trip.

Over the following four days, he will visit a pediatric hospital in the capital as well as families and indigenous communities in the southernmost state of Chiapas, Mexico's poorest state, which gained worldwide attention for the 1990s Zapatista rebellion.

NCR's Vatican correspondent, Joshua J. McElwee, will be traveling with the pope. NCR will have additional reporters in Chiapas and Ciudad Juárez during the trip. 

Watch for coverage onhttp://ncronline.org/feature-series/francis-mexico and a full report in the next print issue.

Francis will visit young people and religious in Morelia, celebrate Mass on the Mexican-U.S. border in Ciudad Juárez and visit its infamous Cereso state prison, where at least 20 people were killed during riots in 2009 triggered by rival gangs among the prisoners.

"We are certain that the presence of the Holy Father will confirm us in the faith, hope and charity and will help the church move ahead in its permanent mission," the Mexican bishops' conference said in a Dec. 12 statement. "It will encourage believers and nonbelievers and commit us to the construction of a just Mexico, with solidarity, reconciliation and peace."

Fr. Oscar Enríquez, parish priest and director of the Paso del Norte Human Rights Center in Ciudad Juárez, told Catholic News Service that Juárez is often seen as an example of overcoming extreme violence. "The pope always looks for the peripheries. Juárez is the periphery of Mexico and it's a place migrants pass through."

Fr. Patricio Madrigal, pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish in the Michoacán city of Nueva Italia, said that by visiting Morelia, the pope "wants to be closer to an area beaten down by violence. He wants to bring comfort and also closeness."

The pope's meeting with young people and religious in Morelia is important, Madrigal said, as the church there works to keep kids out of the cartels, provide priests with support, and "strengthen us in the faith and our work in attending to victims of violence."

Priests in the rugged Tierra Caliente region there had lent moral and spiritual support to vigilantes arming themselves to run off a drug cartel in 2013.

Francis "wants to give young people a message of hope and that they stay away from the temptation of violence," Madrigal said.

Here is the pope's itinerary as released by the Vatican. Times listed are local. The places the pope will visit are on Central Standard Time, except Ciudad Juárez, which is on Mountain time.

Friday, Feb. 12
12:30 p.m. Departure from Rome's Fiumicino Airport.
7:30 p.m. Arrive at Benito Juárez International Airport in Mexico City.

Saturday, Feb. 13
9:30 a.m. Welcoming ceremony at the National Palace, Mexico City, with the president of the republic.
11:30 a.m. Meeting with Mexico's bishops in the city's cathedral.
5 p.m. Mass in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Homily by pope.

Sunday, Feb. 14
10:30 a.m. Fly by helicopter to the "study center" of Ecatepec for Mass.
4:30 p.m. Return to Mexico City for visit to the Federico Gómez Children's Hospital.
6 p.m. Meeting in the National Auditorium with representatives of culture.

Monday, Feb. 15
7:30 a.m. Fly to San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas.
10:15 a.m. Mass at the city's sports center with the indigenous community.
1 p.m. Lunch with representatives of the indigenous community.
4:15 p.m. Meeting with families at the Victor Manuel Reyna Stadium at Tuxtla Gutiérrez. Speech by pope.
6:10 p.m. Return to Mexico City.

Tuesday, Feb. 16
7:50 a.m. Fly to Morelia.
10 a.m. Mass with priests, seminarians, religious men and women.
4:30 p.m. Meeting with young people at the José Maria Morelos y Pavón Stadium.
6:55 p.m. Return to Mexico City.

Wednesday, Feb. 17
8:35 a.m. Fly to Ciudad Juárez.
10:30 a.m. Visit to Cereso prison.
12 p.m. Meeting with workers and employers at the Colegio de Bachilleres of the Mexican state of Chihuahua.
4 p.m. Mass at the fairgrounds of Ciudad Juárez.
7:15 p.m. Return to Rome.

Kudos and Blessings to Sister Simone Campbell - Nuns on the Bus: Commentary from National Catholic Reporter

March 25, 2103


Sister Simone Campbell (Nuns on the Bus) gives a lesson in compassion to Congressman Paul Ryan.  She deserves a private Papal audience, along with church support.  I would like to see Congressman Paul Ryan, who is a Roman Catholic, respond to this commentary by withdrawing the austerity budget he submitted to the US Congress.  Although Congressman Ryan creates a myth about our government somehow being unable to afford to pay people earned benefits like Social Security, Medicare and Veterans benefits, the fact is, middle class Americans can't afford to pay Congressman Paul Ryan.  He must be replaced.  Following is National Catholic Reporter Commentary from Sister Simone from the March 25, 2013 National Catholic Reporter:

http://ncronline.org/node/48416

"Last year, some of my sisters and I became known as the Nuns on the Bus. Together, we journeyed through many parts of America to raise awareness of the plight of working poor families and the threat Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan's budget posed to them and to our country as a whole. Last week, Rep. Ryan unveiled his new Republican budget. It is a budget that rewards wealth instead of work; one that reflects the worst of Ayn Rand as it undermines the best of America. It will take from working poor families to spend more on the wealthy, and it won't even reduce the national debt.

Paul Ryan hasn't called me recently for advice on his budget, but the one piece of advice I wish he would take would be to remember that his budget is not about numbers; it is about people. It is not about charts but about God's children.

I wish he could have been with us on our bus journey when we met Billy and his wife in Milwaukee. They are two of the more than 20 million working Americans who earn so little that they still live in poverty. Both Billy and his wife work, but they make so little that they qualify for and use food stamps to help put meals on the table for themselves and their children.

Reading about Billy isn't the same as meeting him. He's not a name, not a number -- he is a young man working his hardest to support his family. But Paul Ryan has said Billy and his family shouldn't get food stamps because Billy is working.

Think about that for a second. Because he works, we should deny Billy's children a decent meal at the end of the day? Paul Ryan and others will say we can't afford these "handouts" to people like Billy. But when we invest in food stamps to make sure Billy and his family don't go hungry, we aren't just investing in Billy's family. We're investing in Billy's employer by ensuring it has a productive employee. We're investing in future employers by ensuring Billy's children have enough to eat, knowing the significant correlation between childhood hunger and poor performance at school and work later in life. We're investing in consumers because better work leads to lower prices.

In short, when we invest in workers like Billy, we not only invest in one of God's children but also in America. That concept of the common good is central to Catholic social teaching and is something Ayn Rand and Paul Ryan have never seemed to understand.

Paul Ryan sees government programs as evil. I see children sleeping in cars, pregnant women without health care, and the elderly unable to pay for their medication as the real evils. Yet that is the reality for far too many Americans, and Paul Ryan's budget would make it so for even more.

Paul Ryan and many Republican colleagues argue that we should cut government programs because churches should provide these services, an argument not based in reality. The need is simply too great. Bread for the World released a study last year showing that every house of worship in this country would have to raise an additional $50,000 in revenue each year just to be able to fill the void the Ryan budget would create -- $50,000 from each church, synagogue and mosque in America. That's a huge new tax Paul Ryan would place on all our churches, a burden many could not afford.

Ryan also completely ignores the fact that churches and faith groups like Catholic Charities depend heavily on government programs like food stamps to support their work and provide the services that help so many of America's struggling families. There is a powerful public-private partnership between our churches and government that fuels America's safety net. Without government, that safety net will fail and more children will go hungry in this wealthy nation. That is immoral.

As a nation, we must address both the suffering and its causes. Pope Benedict, in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate, said we must work toward a society where each worker can earn enough to support his or her family. If we raised workers' wages instead of CEO bonuses, there wouldn't be as many working parents in need of food stamps. But Paul Ryan and his congressional allies are also fighting to prevent the minimum wage from being tied to the cost of living. Meanwhile, they champion more tax cuts on the bonuses CEOs get when the workers who create their wealth are laid off.

So I wish Paul Ryan would take my advice and think of families like Billy's who would be devastated by his budget. But perhaps if he won't listen to me, he will listen to the prophet Isaiah, whose words to his government leaders thousands of years ago feel especially apt for our Congress today: 'If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday'."

[Sr. Simone Campbell, executive director of NETWORK, a national Catholic social justice lobby, since 2004, is a religious leader, attorney and poet with extensive experience in public policy and advocacy for systemic change. She is also a leader of the Nuns on the Bus campaign.]

Sister Simone: Paul Ryan's budget undermines the best of America

Sister Simone Campbell (Nuns on the Bus) gives a lesson in compassion to Congressman Paul Ryan.  She deserves a private Papal audience, along with church support.  I would like to see Congressman Paul Ryan, who is a Roman Catholic, respond to this commentary by withdrawing the austerity budget he submitted to the US Congress.  Although Congressman Ryan creates a myth about our government somehow being unable to afford to pay people earned benefits like Social Security, Medicare and Veterans benefits, the fact is, middle class Americans can't afford to pay Congressman Paul Ryan.  He must be replaced.  Following is National Catholic Reporter Commentary from Sister Simone from the March 25, 2013 National Catholic Reporter:

http://ncronline.org/node/48416

"Last year, some of my sisters and I became known as the Nuns on the Bus. Together, we journeyed through many parts of America to raise awareness of the plight of working poor families and the threat Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan's budget posed to them and to our country as a whole. Last week, Rep. Ryan unveiled his new Republican budget. It is a budget that rewards wealth instead of work; one that reflects the worst of Ayn Rand as it undermines the best of America. It will take from working poor families to spend more on the wealthy, and it won't even reduce the national debt.

Paul Ryan hasn't called me recently for advice on his budget, but the one piece of advice I wish he would take would be to remember that his budget is not about numbers; it is about people. It is not about charts but about God's children.

I wish he could have been with us on our bus journey when we met Billy and his wife in Milwaukee. They are two of the more than 20 million working Americans who earn so little that they still live in poverty. Both Billy and his wife work, but they make so little that they qualify for and use food stamps to help put meals on the table for themselves and their children.

Reading about Billy isn't the same as meeting him. He's not a name, not a number -- he is a young man working his hardest to support his family. But Paul Ryan has said Billy and his family shouldn't get food stamps because Billy is working.

Think about that for a second. Because he works, we should deny Billy's children a decent meal at the end of the day? Paul Ryan and others will say we can't afford these "handouts" to people like Billy. But when we invest in food stamps to make sure Billy and his family don't go hungry, we aren't just investing in Billy's family. We're investing in Billy's employer by ensuring it has a productive employee. We're investing in future employers by ensuring Billy's children have enough to eat, knowing the significant correlation between childhood hunger and poor performance at school and work later in life. We're investing in consumers because better work leads to lower prices.

In short, when we invest in workers like Billy, we not only invest in one of God's children but also in America. That concept of the common good is central to Catholic social teaching and is something Ayn Rand and Paul Ryan have never seemed to understand.

Paul Ryan sees government programs as evil. I see children sleeping in cars, pregnant women without health care, and the elderly unable to pay for their medication as the real evils. Yet that is the reality for far too many Americans, and Paul Ryan's budget would make it so for even more.

Paul Ryan and many Republican colleagues argue that we should cut government programs because churches should provide these services, an argument not based in reality. The need is simply too great. Bread for the World released a study last year showing that every house of worship in this country would have to raise an additional $50,000 in revenue each year just to be able to fill the void the Ryan budget would create -- $50,000 from each church, synagogue and mosque in America. That's a huge new tax Paul Ryan would place on all our churches, a burden many could not afford.

Ryan also completely ignores the fact that churches and faith groups like Catholic Charities depend heavily on government programs like food stamps to support their work and provide the services that help so many of America's struggling families. There is a powerful public-private partnership between our churches and government that fuels America's safety net. Without government, that safety net will fail and more children will go hungry in this wealthy nation. That is immoral.

As a nation, we must address both the suffering and its causes. Pope Benedict, in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate, said we must work toward a society where each worker can earn enough to support his or her family. If we raised workers' wages instead of CEO bonuses, there wouldn't be as many working parents in need of food stamps. But Paul Ryan and his congressional allies are also fighting to prevent the minimum wage from being tied to the cost of living. Meanwhile, they champion more tax cuts on the bonuses CEOs get when the workers who create their wealth are laid off.

So I wish Paul Ryan would take my advice and think of families like Billy's who would be devastated by his budget. But perhaps if he won't listen to me, he will listen to the prophet Isaiah, whose words to his government leaders thousands of years ago feel especially apt for our Congress today: 'If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday'."

[Sr. Simone Campbell, executive director of NETWORK, a national Catholic social justice lobby, since 2004, is a religious leader, attorney and poet with extensive experience in public policy and advocacy for systemic change. She is also a leader of the Nuns on the Bus campaign.]