Bishop Dennis Sullivan has designated Sunday, May 5 as Justice for Immigrants Sunday, and in a letter to diocesan priests, dated April 15, called on them to address the church’s position on immigration reform.
“For the last two months as your bishop I have been travelling around our diocese in order to learn about it,” Bishop Sullivan wrote in the letter. “In this short time I have become very aware of the large numbers of immigrants who live in our diocese. Many of them are undocumented who do not have official immigration status. Most of them are Catholics. They are your parishioners for whom both you, as their priest, and I as their bishop, have pastoral obligations. They need to know that this is their church and that we are their fathers in christ who welcome them to our parishes and who are concerned for them.”
Bishop Sullivan will offer Mass on Friday, May 3, at 7:30 p.m. at Divine Mercy Parish in Vineland. At this mass, the bishop wrote, “we will pray for God’s blessings on all who come to our country seeking a better life and we will pray that our elected officials will vote for the needed reform of the existing immigration laws. We are an immigrant church and the lives of our catholic people will be impacted by immigration reform as they are by the lack of immigration reform.”
For information on the Catholic Church’s position on immigration, go to the Justice for Immigrants campaign (www.justiceforimmigrants.org), sponsored by the USCCB.
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