Gloria speaks with the Most Reverend Mark J. Seitz, Bishop of El Paso, a borderland community whose sister city is Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. The bishop has focused his work and heart on the poor and vulnerable, including migrant families and refugees. In August 2019, a white 21 year old man shot and killed 23 people and injured 23 others in a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. The gunman had just published an anti-immigrant, white nationalist manifesto online before the attack. And he explicitly targeted those he considered to be Mexicans. Bishop Seitz consoled the victims and their families in the months that followed, but he also wrote a pastoral letter “Night Will Be No More,” in which he directly confronts the evil of racism that led to this mass shooting. In it he writes, “Challenging racism and white supremacy, whether in our hearts or in society, is a Christian imperative and the cost of not facing these issues head on, weighs much more heavily on those who live the reality of discrimination.”

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Links:

Bishop Seitz’s Pastoral Letter on racism, Night Will Be No More

Bishop Seitz’s Pastoral Letter on migration, Sorrow and Mourning Flee Away

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