Archbishop Lori says church will continue to minister to migrants, listen to the people

Archbishop William E. Lori said Nov. 13 that the church will continue to minister to migrants and immigrants “as if we were ministering to Christ himself.”

During the annual fall meeting in Baltimore of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the archbishop noted that the meeting had already touched on the issue of immigration via presentations by the conference president, Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, in his Nov. 12 talk and that a fuller discussion was scheduled for later in the agenda.

Asked how the church would support migrants and immigrants within the Archdiocese of Baltimore, Archbishop Lori said, “They are people. They are people endowed with an immortal soul with human dignity. 

“They are loved in the eyes of God and the church needs to have the freedom to be able to minister to those who need the basic necessities of life, as if we were ministering to Christ himself. And that’s what we will do,” he told the Catholic Review.

In his presidential address, Archbishop Broglio reflected on the U.S. presidential election, and emphasized that the bishops “never backpedal or renounce the clear teaching of the Gospel” but “proclaim it in and out of season,” and that Christians, generally speaking, must be “catalysts for a more humane and worthy approach to daily life.”

“We must insist on the dignity of the human person from womb to tomb,” he said, emphasizing the church’s commitments include seeing Christ in people in need, defending the poor, fighting the evil of racism and caring for migrants while calling for immigration reform.

“We certainly do not encourage illegal immigration, but we will all have to stand before the throne of grace and hear the Lord ask us if we saw him in the hungry, thirsty, naked, homeless, stranger or sick and responded to his needs,” Archbishop Broglio said.

Archbishop Lori, who has served for 20 years as supreme chaplain of the Knights of Columbus, said he was pleased that the current supreme knight, Patrick Kelly, would address the body of bishops about the Cor Initiative sponsored by the Knights.

The archbishop said Cor, which comes from the Latin word for “heart,” is “an initiative across the order to help men, Catholic men, gather in fraternal dialogue, to talk about their lives and about their faith, and about their vocation and all the things that really matter in their lives.”

In his address to the bishops, Kelly said the initiative aims to help parishes create small groups for men, not just for those who are Knights, but for all.

“We see that Catholic men are struggling to be the husbands and fathers God calls them to be,” he said. “This is no small thing, since we know that the single most important factor in a child growing up and staying Catholic is the faith life of their father.”

He said the Knights will help support the effort only in parishes that give permission because they are aware that many parishes already have effective small groups for men and other programs that meet the need.

He cited a statistic that a quarter of millennials say they have no strong friendships, or no friends at all. The Cor Initiative is “a place for men to find and form authentic friendships, the kind of friendships that help in the pursuit of holiness and inspire a greater desire to serve.”

By opening up to those who are not Knights, Cor is a departure from other programs in the Knights’ history that have been aimed primarily to members, Kelly said. The program is already available in 3,000 parishes nationwide and will launch soon in 2,300 more.

Archbishop Lori said other highlights of the meeting included a prayer session led on the first day by Bishop Joseph N. Perry, auxiliary bishop emeritus of Chicago, as well as “an especially lovely opening Mass” at Baltimore’s Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Archbishop Lori said the talk by Cardinal Christophe Pierre, papal nuncio to the U.S., was one of the most beautiful he has heard in all his years attending the bishops’ meetings. “Through the lens of the pope’s new encyclical on the Sacred Heart, (Cardinal Pierre) tied together so many things in the life of the church, whether it was the Synod on Synodality, the political transition we are going through or the Jubilee of Hope,” designated for 2025 by Pope Francis.

As one of the conference’s two delegates to the World Synod in Rome in October, Archbishop Lori helped make a presentation about the synod, along with Bishop Daniel E. Flores of Brownsville, Texas, chairman of the USCCB Committee on Doctrine.

“I thought the discussion yesterday on synodality was excellent, and not necessarily my brief presentation, but more what Bishop Flores had to say, and then the discussions that followed.”

Archbishop Lori and Bishop Flores addressed a news conference Nov. 13, with the archbishop noting that while the Archdiocese of Baltimore has already employed a synodal structure in many instances, being at the global synod was a different experience, which included a lot of listening as well as discerning and disagreeing. He said he returned to the archdiocese even more committed to the synodal style, even though it takes time and patience.

Bishop Flores said synodal listening is about trying to understand the perspective of the one who speaks. It’s not a skill one can learn in an online course, he said.

Archbishop Lori said as pastoral leaders, priests and bishops should strive to find the people with the God-given gifts to help get done what needs to be done, to unite the parish or diocese. “I found in my own experience as a bishop for nearly 30 years, if I try to be the smartest person in the room, it’s a bad scene. In fact, the important thing for one who’s a pastor is to pray to the Holy Spirit,” to help find the gifts, charisms and talents and then harness and harmonize them.

He said listening can be hard, especially if someone says something a pastor does not want to hear. Listening to the Word of God and to each other must include understanding the context and situation of the other.

“Pastors who do this, and who have done this their whole life as a priest – chances are those are the places where the churches are full on Sunday. People want to be there and to participate,” the archbishop said.

Email Christopher Gunty at editor@CatholicReview.org.

OSV News contributed to this story.

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