Church leaders meet at US-Mexico border to address migration

By Luis Donaldo González - Tijuana, Mexico

Right after the 2025 Vatican’s Jubilee of Migrants, members of the Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church (CTEWC) Virtual Table on Migration and Borders in the Americas, in collaboration with the Universidad Iberoamericana or IBERO, held an international Colloquium on Migration and Theology entitled “The Challenges of Human Mobility in the Face of the New Political Horizons of Mexico and the United States from the Christian Perspective.”

One of the Colloquium’s main goals was to remind the world Catholic Church and society in general that “Christian charity requires not only humanitarian outreach and hospitality, but liberation from the injustices marking cruel practices and dehumanizing policies,” said American theologian Kristin Heyer, co-chair of CTEWC and Boston College professor.

This international conference, held on October 9 – 11, gathered around 40 bishops, scholars, philanthropists, and pastoral ministers in Tijuana, Mexico, one of the border cities where the US and Mexican social realities and cultures meet while being divided by a metal fence or wall—which is now charged with strong anti-immigrant and political narratives

“The border is not [just] a limit but a space for human encounter, compassion, and mission,” IBERO Tijuana director Florentino Badial said.

Emilce Cuda, secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, attended this Colloquium in which a third of the attendees recognized themselves as migrants. “Migrant bishops and theologians, doing theology from their own personal experience as a starting point, confirm once again that realities are greater than ideas,” Cuda said.

“This [border] wall did not stop my dreams,” said Salvadoran-American Auxiliary Bp. Evelio Menjívar-Ayala of Washington, D.C., who fled his home country at age 19.

“When I crossed the border at age 17, my dream was to be able to study and become ‘someone’ [in the society],” said Silvia Correa, now a doctoral student in psychological research at the ITESO University in Guadalajara, Mexico. “This colloquium is a sign of hope,” she continued, “as it listens to the voices of those of us who are migrants, those of us who walk alongside people in mobility, and also includes the voices of those of us who reflect academically and those who make decisions in pastoral care,” she continued.

Auxiliary Bp. Carlos A. Santos García of Monterrey, Mexico; Mr. Dylan Corbett, executive director of the Hope Border Institute in El Paso, Texas; and Sr. Dolores Palencia, Synod on Synodality voter and minister at the migrant shelter in Tierra Blanca, Veracruz, presented and discussed the 2024 border bishop’s pastoral letter, “He Saw Them, He Drew Near to Them and He Cared for Them.”

 “We needed a letter like this because we are ‘one and unique Catholic Church,’ so we must go beyond any nationalism,” Santos García said.

“When we combine these realities, we can have a clearer idea of the phenomenon of migration than when we approach it only from public discourses or academic studies,” Mexican ethicist and Loyola University Chicago professor Yohan García said.

During this three-day event, we proposed a new model of academic-pastoral Colloquium to truly spark an experiential dialogue that shows the vulnerability of the human heart. This model will help to respond to the humanitarian crisis that is going on throughout the world, especially in Mexico and the United States.

Among the attendees, who came from eight different countries, were Bp. Eugenio Lira Rugarcía of Matamoros-Reynosa and head of the Mexico Bishop’s Human Mobility Ministry; Mexican theologian Jutta Battenberg Galindo; Ms. Norma Romero, founder of Las Patronas; Argentine theologian Pablo Blanco, Latin American coordinator for CTEWC; Mexican Jesuit and Boston College professor Alejandro Olayo-Méndez; and Mexican-American theologian and University of San Diego professor Victor Carmona.