Kevin Clarke at America magazine spoke with a Catholic prelate who has long experience in migration issues, Miami’s Archbishop Thomas Wenski:
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.”
Springfield’s Haitian community found itself in an unexpected and no doubt unwelcome national spotlight this week when both members of the G.O.P. ticket—[JD] Vance on the campaign trail and Mr. Trump during his debate with Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris—repeated stories gleaned from unverified reports on social media. The national leaders alleged that individuals within the city’s growing Haitian community were, as the former president put it during the debate on Sept.10, “eating cats; they’re eating dogs … they’re eating pets.”
Municipal officials were quick to refute the stories, noting that no credible reports of the behavior described by Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance had been brought to Springfield police or municipal officials.
At Springfield’s Haitian Community Help and Support Center the day after the debate, Rose-Thamar Joseph told The Associated Press that the city’s Haitian immigrants are feeling a rising sense of unease as longtime residents increasingly bristle at newcomers taking jobs at factories, driving up housing costs and straining city services.
“Some of them are talking about living in fear. Some of them are scared for their life,” Ms. Joseph said. The rising tensions in the community became apparent on Sept. 12, when Springfield City Hall, a local elementary school and all Clark County offices were closed after multiple bomb threats were phoned in to municipal agencies.
Tony Stieritz, the chief executive of Catholic Charities Southwestern Ohio, was understandably reluctant to comment on the president’s assertions, but the wild stories and the sudden national attention have had an impact. Like other Catholic Charities agencies that work with migrant communities, he said, his office has been under attack by phone, email and over social media by angry commentators accusing Catholic Charities of contributing to, even creating the crisis in Springfield by moving the Haitian migrant community there…
… Archbishop Wenski 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.”
Since the 19th century’s “know nothings,” “anti-immigrant sentiment has always been tied to anti-Catholicism in this country,” Archbishop Wenski said, “and those ties have not been severed yet.”
How does that explain the attitude and public comments of a Catholic convert like Mr. Vance? “Well, anyone can call themselves a practicing Catholic,” Archbishop Wenski said, “but we all have to practice until we get it right.”
