About 300 people gathered for Mass Sept. 24 at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Melrose Park to pray for immigrants and migrants who feel threatened by the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Chicago.
They also prayed for Silverio Villegas González, a Mexican immigrant shot and killed by ICE agents during a traffic stop in Franklin Park on Sept. 12. Villegas González’s family attended the Mass and brought up the gifts. There was a photo of him in the sanctuary.
Before Mass, members of the Catholic grassroots organization Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership distributed T-shirts and materials.
Ten priests joined Auxiliary Bishop José María Garcia-Maldonado for the Mass in Spanish, which concluded with a candlelight eucharistic procession around the neighborhood.
The parish celebrated the Mass as a Catholic response to protests, violence and fear in the community, said Scalabrinian Father Leandro Fossá, pastor of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
“The Mass was for the immigrant community that stayed and to see that the church is walking with them,” he said. “The whole purpose was to show that when we pray together, when we adore the Blessed Sacrament together, when we walk with the Blessed Sacrament leading us, we know that we are not alone.”
People must find peace and reconciliation within for the violence end, Fossá said.
“The community is scared. The kids don’t want to go to school or come to church because they are scared their parents will be taken away,” he said.
The ministry of the church is always to show hope, Fossá noted.
“Trials, persecution, violence will always happen, has always happened in the world,” he said. “But we believe that God stands with us in these moments, so we have powerful tools like the Eucharist, processions, praying the rosary.”
Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish has committed to praying the rosary together outside once a week to show that parishioners and parish leaders stand with the immigrant community and to be beacons of hope, he said.
Catholic churches must open their doors at times of great strife to offer Masses for peace and reconciliation and to give people a place to go and pray, he said.
“That’s what we can do. We don’t answer with violence and protest. We answer with processions, with hope,” Fossá said.