JCCU

Growing up I learned about the science of how the bay functioned as an ecosystem. I also learned how the bay’s health was damaged by years of pollution, urban and suburban development, and poor environmental policies.

Although we offer these Masses for the migrants and their intentions, I nevertheless find myself being impacted and changed by it. Most especially, I see the moment when we pray the Our Father differently.

I am more than grateful for these extraordinary years, and to the whole JRS family for the love that makes what we do possible.

Luis is from a rural town in Guatemala. He didn’t start school until he was 11 years old and at the time cleaned boots to pay for school fees. Later (at age 13), he started harvesting coffee. Once he was 16, a Christian nonprofit started to help him with the school fees and helped him graduate.

“My name is Roberto. I have a wife and three young children. We are originally from the state of Morelos, Mexico. Our life in Morelos was beautiful. We lived in a small town nestled in the mountains.

Walter (not his real name) comes from El Salvador, is a hairdresser and is gay. In his country, he survived an assassination attempt by the maras, who beat and stabbed him. "I lost everything. But I am alive." He fled his country and arrived in Mexico, where he crossed the Sonora desert.

Through these experiences, I have witnessed amazing humanizing efforts in the social apostolate: empowering women in a society where they are excluded, violated or killed; ... and announcing the Gospel values of justice, solidarity, hospitality and love amid a broken and searching world.

When I started my journey, I thought I was going to have a career in social work; instead, I have found a vocation. While my vocation has not been a call to the religious life it has been a clear and persistent call to a ministry deeply rooted in my faith.

I considered my engagement in social issues an essential component of my faith. I was and continue to be deeply convinced that our faith calls us to have a preferential option for the poor. This means to always seek to understand the world from the perspective of those who live in the margins, and to work actively for social and political change to transform oppressive structures. For me, my faith was a call to be radical.

At this point, my journey to not only understand but to become a co-laborer in the Jesuit social apostolate began. It was contextualized in the witness of the martyrs who intertwined pastoral work and academic rigor with social analysis and projection that responded to the realities of their place and time.