By Marlene Quaroni - Florida Catholic

MIAMI | Emulating the actions of their founder and patron, Father Michael McGivney and Msgr. Bryan Walsh, respectively, St. John Neumann’s Knights of Columbus are striving to help immigrants.

“On the feast day of the Virgin Mary’s Assumption, we invited St. John Neumann parishioners to a rosary service to pray for her intercession in order to find a just solution to immigration issues facing the country,” said Gus Caballero, deputy grand knight of Council 13369.

Its patron is Miami’s late Msgr. Walsh, best known for spearheading the exodus of 14,000 unaccompanied minors from Cuba to Miami in the early 1960s. Father McGivney, whose cause for canonization is underway, founded the Knights of Columbus as a fraternal organization to help the widows and children of Irish immigrants arriving to America in the late 19th century.

“It’s appropriate that we take this action today because like current immigrants, Mary, too, was an immigrant,” Caballero said. “As Catholics, we pray, but prayer is nothing without action.”

The Knights helped Father Matthew Gomez, St. John Neumann parochial vicar and a third-degree Knight, to organize the rosary service. Afterwards, they urged parishioners to take action, handing out copies of a letter for them to send to their members of Congress.

“This is not about being a Democrat or Republican,” said Caballero. “Not about leaning to the left or right. We are asking our representatives to do their part to find a solution.”

The letter told congressional representatives that the parishioners’ action was rooted in their Catholic faith and five principles of Catholic social teaching listed in “Strangers No Longer: Together on the Journey of Hope,” a pastoral letter issued jointly by the bishops of the United States and Mexico.

Those five principles are: the right to find opportunities in a person’s homeland, the right to migrate to support themselves and their families, a nation’s right to control its borders, the need for protection of refugees and asylum seekers, and respect for the human dignity and rights of undocumented migrants.

The Knights recited decades of the rosary in English and Spanish. One Knight, Paul Klepomis, recited a decade in Lithuanian, the language of his immigrant grandparents. Those praying the rosary were invited to pray in their native language.

Before each of the five mysteries, Father Gomez read a reflection on immigration.

“The Church hears the suffering cry of all who are uprooted from their own land, of families forcefully separated, of those who, in the rapid changes of our day, are unable to find a stable home anywhere,” he read from Pope John Paul II’s Message for World Migration Day 2000. “She senses the anguish of those without rights, without any security, at the mercy of every kind of exploitation, and she supports them in their unhappiness. We are called to work so that every person’s dignity is respected, the immigrant is welcomed as a brother or sister, and all humanity forms a united family which knows how to appreciate with discernment the different cultures which comprise it.”

Father Gomez added that action is where “the rubber meets the road.”

“As a parish priest, I want to do my part to help,” he said.