Interfaith Education Fund

Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church hosted the Southern Arizona Interfaith - PCICEO Hispanic Leaders group for a training on "Poder."  Twenty-five leaders, many of which attended a 3-day Spanish training last November, discussed power, conducted house meetings and planned for the future with Fr. Vili Valderrama.  Participating parishes included: St. Cyril’s, Sacred Heart, St. Monica’s, St. Augustine Cathedral, St. Christopher’s, Our Lady of Fatima, Sacred Heart, St. John’s and San Martin de Porres.

Those who attended the November training are now organizing sessions on immigration and other topics in their parishes, including a Know Your Rights and Citizenship forum put together by the leadership team of St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church with Catholic Community Services (in right photo).  Immigration lawyer Amy Fairchild-Haer dispelled common rumors and answered questions.  Msgr. Raul Trevizo, Pat Alvarez, Sofia Rodriguez and Lorena Santos led house meetings and distributed a “Plan de Preparacion” for parish members. 

Training was also conducted at Our Lady of Fatima Catholic and St. Cyril of Alexandria Catholic churches.

Additional photos. 

On Sunday, March 12th, over 100 parishioners and people from the community participated in a workshop on immigration hosted by Holy Spirit Church in Fairfield, California. Attorney and Catholic Charities board member Miriam Sammartino answered questions about the latest executive orders from the White House, how to respond if stopped by immigration, and how to be best prepared in a time of uncertainty.

Fairfield Interim Police Chief Randy Fenn and four officers participated in the workshop and pledged to work with the church and Common Ground to build a better relationship between law enforcement and the community.

When parish leaders of Our Lady of Guadalupe Mission from the Diocese of Alexandria, Louisiana learned that nursery workers were traveling to Dallas for basic immigration services, they turned to Northern & Central Louisiana Interfaith (NCLI) for help.  NCLI urged the Catholic workers to carefully invest in relationships with Anglos and African Americans – including Baptists and Methodists.  The workers responded.  At a monthly convening of mostly Black and White leaders, one immigrant shared that he felt caught between providing for his family and breaking immigration laws.  In response, an African American gentleman revealed that he had grown up on a plantation speaking only Creole, and that when he started school in the city he and his siblings were treated as strangers due to their accents and ways.  This encounter created the basis for trust –sufficient to work together not just in the founding of a local immigrant center, but also around reforming police practices to stop racial profiling.  

In an effort to engage face-to-face with parishioners in one of the most ethnically-diverse parishes in the Diocese of Fort Worth, congregational leaders of St. Joseph Catholic launched a weekend-long house meeting campaign that drew 546 people into conversation.  After each mass, parishioners were invited to stay an additional 30 minutes to get to know others in their congregation; multiple conversations were held in the circular sanctuary.

Congregational leaders who form the parish development team used the listening campaign to jump start their parish development process to hear concerns and identify new leaders for the church.  The intent is to “develop disciples to live out the mission of the church in the community.”  Leaders heard stories of unemployment and isolation.  They also heard from parishioners who wanted to join certain ministries but had never been asked!

This action is part of a larger campaign to strengthen the institutions of Allied Communities of Tarrant in the Fort Worth area; a house meeting event years prior drew 300.

More photos, St. Joseph Catholic Church

Anniversary of September 11, Allied Communities of Tarrant

In 2014, five years after the foreclosure crisis had wiped out immigrant homeownership in Assumption Catholic Church in Monterey County, California, a new scam threatened the parish.  Targeting low-income, Spanish speaking residents in Catholic churches, an unscrupulous group signed up thousands of predatory lending victims (at the price of $1,250 a head) for a lawsuit against the banks that defrauded them.  The group had no real intention of seeing the lawsuit through. 

However, unbeknownst to these characters, the leaders of Assumption had undergone in-depth parish leadership development, the result of which was a strong and vibrant team of new leaders who, from COPA, had learned to secure lighting in the parish neighborhood, sign up residents for expanded Medicaid and expand healthcare access for undocumented residents of Monterey.  Having developed confidence in their own competence, upon hearing an announcement about the lawsuit at mass, these COPA-trained leaders immediately moved into action. 

They stopped the predators from recruiting at their parish, alerted the Diocese of the danger to other Monterey County parishes and went on to persuade the County District Attorney to assign an investigator to the case.  Through their training and experience, the parish leadership of Assumption was able to protect fellow parishioners and save thousands more families from being re-victimized.   

During the onset of the Great Recession, Valley Interfaith Project Education Fund in Arizona worked with two central Phoenix parishes, St. Agnes and Most Holy Trinity, on parish leadership development and training.  At both parishes, sizable influxes of immigrant families were challenging the pastors and parish leaders with how to deal with two quite distinct communities under one roof. 

Through a patient series of training sessions which examined the relationship of the church and its leaders to the parish community, key members of the Latino and Anglo communities began to build relationships, evaluate their collective responsibilities to the parish, and initiate parish wide conversations around stewardship and the importance of parish membership and registration. Both parishes saw important gains in registered membership, participation in stewardship, and an appreciation among parishioners of the public role of the parish, particularly in defending the rights of the immigrant community.  St. Agnes, an inner city parish, doubled its registered membership and added thousands to its weekly collections.