Miami’s Archbishop Thomas Wenski could only marvel in amusement at the stories he has heard recirculated by former President Donald J. Trump and his running mate Ohio Senator JD Vance about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. But he was eager to speak more seriously about a moral call to hospitality for newcomers to U.S. shores.
Like generations of immigrants who have come before them, including many of the ancestors of some contemporary U.S. Catholics who now seem to consistently deplore new immigrant arrivals, Haitian immigrants simply seek to escape economically and socially desperate conditions in their homeland, he said.
“This is the story of America,” Archbishop Wenski said. “Haitians have come to work; they’ve come to succeed. They’ll go where the jobs are.”
And in the end, the archbishop is certain the communities where they land will be better off for it—just like Miami where the grandchildren of Haitian immigrants of the past are heading to college or accepting positions of civic and professional responsibility that help South Florida thrive.
Archbishop Wenski said he made some inquiries about the church in Springfield after learning that so many Haitian people had been moving there and discovered that four parishes in the community were administered by just one priest. “So this is a tremendous opportunity if the church knows how to respond appropriately,” he said. “Because if there are 10,000 or 15,000 or 20,000 Haitians in that area, that could revitalize one or two of those parishes and bring new life to those parishes and new life to the community.”
Archbishop Wenski, for his part, hopes contemporary U.S. Catholics, now secure in their place in American society, would do more to counter xenophobic tensions that are stoked for political gain, reminding them they were once part of an outsider class of “Irish Catholics, Italian Catholics, Polish Catholics” themselves. “We all suffered discrimination because we were outsiders. You would think that we would have a better memory about that and take that into account for the newcomers because we were once newcomers ourselves.”
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Kevin Clarke is America’s chief correspondent and the author of Oscar Romero: Love Must Win Out (Liturgical Press).
With thanks to America and Kevin Clarke, where this article originally appeared.
