When Washington Auxiliary Bishop Evelio Menjivar-Ayala returned home to rural El Salvador earlier this year, his 90-year-old mother, Catalina Ayala de Menjivar, put him right to work, to join her in weeding and tending to the crops on their family’s plot of farmland and to help with various chores there.
“When I go back home in El Salvador, my mom is like (telling me), I have to put this ring away, and get the shovel and the machete and help her. She’s 90 years old, she still works,” the 54-year-old bishop said in a recent interview. He added, “I went back home, and I helped to build a shed for the chickens.”
Work has been part of the fabric of Bishop Menjivar’s life, from his childhood when he worked on his family’s farm, to the many different jobs he did as a young man after fleeing his war-torn country and immigrating to the United States, to his eventual ordination as a priest for The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington in 2004, to his ordination as a bishop for Washington in 2023.
Bishop Menjivar, who is believed to be the first bishop for the United States who was born in El Salvador, summarized his work history in May as he addressed graduates at Georgetown University and received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree.
“In 1990, I arrived in Los Angeles, California with only a change of clothes in a backpack, but full of dreams,” Bishop Menjivar told the graduates. “As most immigrants do, I did any kind of job I could get: receptionist, construction, janitorial work, painting, youth ministry. Meanwhile, I took English classes at night, and I also studied for the high school equivalency degree.”
Noting how he had served as a parish priest in Washington for two decades when he learned that Pope Francis had appointed him to serve as an auxiliary bishop there, he added, “Not bad for someone who began cleaning restrooms and painting houses with no English, right? We all must start somewhere and seize every opportunity that life offers us.”
The future bishop had arrived in the United States at the age of 18 as an undocumented immigrant, and after applying for asylum and gaining a work permit and later a green card, he became a U.S. citizen in 2006. In his first job, he worked as a receptionist at a law firm in Los Angeles. For the first time, he received a paycheck for his work, and like many immigrants, he began sending money back home to El Salvador to help his family there.
At his next job, he worked in maintenance at clinics in that area, doing whatever needed to be done, including painting and sometimes putting in floors.
“Work is always a blessing,” he said, adding, “I really liked my work as a painter, because I could see the results of my work… Just fixing a house or a place brings a lot of satisfaction.”
After moving to the Washington area, Evelio Menjivar worked as a janitor at a UPS warehouse in Laurel, Maryland, arriving before dawn to clean offices, and then after trucks left for deliveries, cleaning those work areas. He also had a part-time job in Gaithersburg cleaning offices. Later, he worked as a painter for two years.
Another aspect of working that he enjoyed was the camaraderie that he shared with his fellow workers.
“Working with others is a really beautiful experience. I feel like I truly built up good relationships, friendships with others,” said Bishop Menjivar, noting that sometimes when celebrating Mass in the Silver Spring area, he sees an old man that he used to paint with. “Building up community (at work), you start caring for one another. You are sad when something happens to those people. So the workplace becomes a family, you support each other.”
Like many immigrant workers, he was sometimes exploited. He described a time when he was working for a painting company, and the company’s owner didn’t pay the workers.
Bishop Menjivar also noted how immigrant workers sometimes do not have workplace safety that other workers have. “Painting those very tall townhouses, you always take risks, and most of the time, I didn’t have health insurance,” he said.
Two months after being ordained as a bishop, he celebrated the annual Memorial Mass at St. Camillus Church in Silver Spring for construction workers – nearly all immigrant and non-union workers – who died in workplace accidents that past year in Washington and surrounding areas. Bishop Menjivar, who wore a hard hat at the Mass along with his priestly vestments, incensed rows of chairs that each contained a white hard hat bearing the name of a fallen worker, next to a red rose. That year, there were 40 hard hats in those chairs.
The bishop said that presiding at the Mass “was a very moving experience. It could have been me. It could have been my brother. My brother-in-law fell from the roof. From there, he could not do much work. So it could have been anybody, it could have been me, because I took risks, to paint and without the right equipment.”
For his episcopal motto, Bishop Menjivar had chosen the phrase, “Ibat cum illis,” (“He walked with them”) from Luke 24:15, the account of Jesus walking with two disciples on the road to Emmaus. That phrase resonates with him, after his experiences as an immigrant and a worker.
“We need to walk with people, we need to meet people where they are,” the bishop said, adding, “He (Jesus) walked with them, that means everybody, with all people.”
As a parish priest, Father Menjivar served as a parochial vicar at Mother Seton Parish in Germantown and in that role at St. Bartholomew Parish in Bethesda and at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington, and later as the pastor of Our Lady Queen of the Americas Parish in Washington and of St. Mary’s Parish in Landover Hills.
As a parish priest and now as a bishop, he understands the challenges that immigrants and other workers face, and how they sometimes face uncertainty about their jobs and are making sacrifices to support themselves, their families here and their families in their native countries. As a priest, he knew that it was important to be available to those workers in the evenings and weekends, because they cannot leave work during the day.
He received training to be a labor priest and learned about the Catholic Church’s traditional support for labor unions, and how labor unions helped earlier generations of immigrants and workers today to gain better pay, benefits and job security, enabling them to attain the American dream.
“The first thing the labor movement does, it creates solidarity,” Bishop Menjivar said. “You come to understand that you are not alone, and that somebody else is going to speak up for you, that’s the union. Somebody is going to be with you… (and) defend your rights. If you do it yourself, it’s going to be very easy for the company or the boss to get rid of you, but if you do it in solidarity, in union with others, that is going to be more difficult, so you have the protection of that solidarity… That’s the beauty that I see in labor unions, that you look after the well-being of others.”
In addition to his title as a priest and then as a bishop, Bishop Menjivar has another title that is very meaningful to him. “I’m very honored to be a labor priest,” he said.
Asked about what Labor Day means to him, Bishop Menjivar noted that much of the world celebrates work on May 1, the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker which is also known as International Workers Day and May Day. Labor Day, he said, is “a great celebration, because it is a celebration about workers, it is about the people that sacrifice the comfort in their lives and risk to build up a better world, to provide for their families.”
Reflecting on the dignity of work, he said, “Work lifts our spirits up, because we know that we are contributing to society, making society better, making our life better. We are co-creators with God.”
The bishop said that the special nature of work can be seen in part of the Eucharistic prayer that priests recite at Mass during the consecration: “Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, for through your goodness we have received the bread we offer you: fruit of the earth and work of human hands, it will become for us the bread of life.”
He noted, “It is not just bread that has come down from heaven, but it is the fruit of our labor, that becomes the Eucharist.”
During the Mass in February 2023 at St. Matthew’s Cathedral when Cardinal Wilton Gregory ordained Bishop Menjivar as a new auxiliary bishop of Washington, the cardinal in his homily encouraged the new bishop to draw upon his previous experiences as an immigrant and working man.
The cardinal noted, “Evelio, you became a manual laborer as you adapted to your new home in the United States of America. Like countless others before you, you earned your upkeep with demanding work. You know very well the countless gifts that our immigrant brothers and sisters continue to bring to our nation as hard workers in many different occupations. Jesus was known as a common laborer and was often referred to as the son of a carpenter before he began his public ministry. People called him an everyday worker before they began to call him Rabbi. He never lost that understanding of the dignity of hard work and neither must you. People will be more inclined to listen to and to believe you when they know that you understand the struggles and the trials that they themselves endure.”
Asked what those words of the cardinal meant to him that day, Bishop Menjivar said, “I was crying. I was so moved, I was so touched. He was saying, ‘Don’t forget who you are.’ Shame on me if I forget who I am.”
Bishop Menjivar noted that as a parish priest, he often pitched in with painting that needed to be done. Now as a bishop serving again as the pastor of Our Lady Queen of the Americas, he recently joined plumbers fixing a leak in the building late in the evening, bringing them food and helping with the clean-up.
Concluding the interview, the bishop smiled and showed a video of his 90-year-old mother working in the field, and one of her small great-grandsons running out to bring her lunch.
“That’s my mom. I learned from her, the joy of working,” Bishop Menjivar said.
