My Dear Sisters and Brothers,
I write to you with a heart both heavy and burning with grief for what is unfolding across this nation and a fire that cannot be quenched. We are living in a time of deep moral rot. The conscience of this nation has been numbed, and its most vulnerable, especially migrants and asylum seekers, are being treated not as children of God but as disposable commodities, political pawns, and threats to be expelled.
Each day brings more suffering. Mothers and fathers torn from their children. People having fled violence and poverty, are being returned to the desperation they fled, and many to certain death. Human beings are being warehoused in detention centers and denied basic dignity, due process and legal recourse. Deportations accelerated. Asylum denied. The trauma is soul wrenching.
And what of the Church? What of us?
The hour demands more than liturgy and lament. It calls for moral courage. It calls for us to move from behind our altars and step out from our sanctuaries. This is our kairos moment, a divinely appointed moment of decision, truth, and transformation. And we must not let it pass us by.
Every time we stand at the altar and say: “This is my body, given for you – This is my blood poured out for you”, we proclaim not only the mystery of Christ’s sacrifice but also the vocation we ourselves are called to embody. The Eucharist is not a ritual to be preserved in safety. It is a life to be lived in risk, in offering, in solidarity. It is a summons to become the very oblation that we consume, Body and Blood, for the life of the world.
The time for caution has passed. Our cautious and measured response, if it continues, will become betrayal.
We must raise our voices in unflinching condemnation of the state-sponsored cruelty being carried out in our name. We must stand with and for migrants, publicly, visibly, and courageously. We must show up at the very sites of suffering: at ICE assaults, in detention centers, outside courthouses, and beside deportation vans. Our churches must become sanctuaries not only in word, but in fact. And from our pulpits, we must preach with bold clarity and unwavering conviction, not diluting the gospel to avoid discomfort, but proclaiming it in its full prophetic power. We dare not repeat the shameful silence of the Church during the horrors of Nazi Germany. Now is the time to become one Confessing Church, counting not the cost, but the call of the Gospel. If there was ever a time for acts of civil disobedience, it is now.
We were ordained to be icons of self-giving, cruciform love, to live in such a way that others might see the crucified and risen Christ in our witness. This is not about politics. It is about fidelity to the gospel. It is about refusing to let fear or comfort displace compassion and justice.
Let us not be remembered as priests who stood by while the vulnerable were hunted and deported. Let us be remembered as shepherds who would not abandon the sheep. Let us be remembered as those who loved not just in word, but with their very lives.
It is time to lead, not with timidity, but with prophetic boldness. To risk our reputations, our pulpits, and our privilege in the name of the One who risked everything for us. Let our life be an offering. Let our priesthood become resistance. Let our presence be a sign of hope.
This is our Eucharistic vocation. This is our prophetic call. This is our kairos moment.
With urgency and hope,
Frank Alagna, board president, Ulster Immigrant Defense Network
Americans for Immigrant Justice