Young Jesuit William Critchley-Menor has spoken for the first time since his arrest during an immigration rally in Washington DC on Thursday, 18 July.
Critchley-Menor SJ and 69 others were arrested during a “Catholic Day of Action for Immigrant Children” in which attendees protested the detention of children on the US-Mexico border.
READ: Young Jesuit among 70 arrested during immigration rally in Washington DC
“We prayed the Sorrowful Mysteries as 70 of us were arrested at the Russell Senate Office Building last Thursday for protesting the detention of immigrant children at the border. The decisions that allow their detention, their being torn from families and left in crowded facilities without access to a shower, are indeed a sorrowful mystery. But what I saw as my hands were locked tightly into wasted-plastic zip-tie handcuffs was a Luminous Mystery,” Critchley-Menor wrote in an article posted on the America Magazine website.
“As I stood in the building’s rotunda with lights streaming from high windows and saw rows of Catholics around me and above on a balcony, I felt the presence of the Communion of Saints. It was not unlike sitting in church, where layers of saints and angels are depicted around us. We stood in a threshold, a liminal space where the demands of the Gospel were felt and where the vast difference between the reign of God and the reign of principalities was clear.”
To continue reading the article, click here.
With thanks to the America Magazine and William Critchley-Menor SJ, where this article originally appeared.
