For decades, St. Peter’s Catholic Church on Capitol Hill has been known for providing hospitality to people arriving on buses to the nation’s capital for the annual March for Life. Before dawn on those days, volunteers have opened the doors to St. Peter’s parish hall beneath the church for the marchers to get coffee and donuts, and likewise opened the doors those afternoons for marchers to have a place to rest before returning home.
Since the last week of July, St. Peter’s opened the doors of its hall on Wednesday and Friday mornings and afternoons to offer hospitality to people arriving in Washington on buses, this time to welcome and support migrants coming on cross-country journeys from Texas and Arizona, sent on buses by the governors of those states experiencing an influx of immigration at their borders.
“This is what we do as Church, to help those in need. There was never a question not to do it,” said Father Daniel Carson, St. Peter’s pastor. He added, “Having done the march, it’s very easy for them (parishioners) to get this set up.”
‘March for Life muscles’
That point was echoed by Molly Pannell, the communications and development coordinator at St. Peter’s, who said, “When we first started, I thought, ‘I’m flexing my March for Life muscles here.’”
Instead of coffee cups and boxes of donuts lining the tables in the parish hall, volunteers had neatly organized and stacked baby diapers, towels, toiletries, shoes and clothes for children and adults, and backpacks, toys and stuffed animals for children on tables along two walls of the large room. The items had been donated by parishioners, friends of the parish, and people in the neighborhood.
On tables along another wall, chicken, rice and vegetable meals from Chef José Andrés’s World Central Kitchen were ready to be served to the arriving migrants. On both sides of the back of the church, outdoor showers covered in tarp for privacy were set up for men and women to get cleaned up after their long bus rides.
“A lot of people are coming with just the clothes on their back. This provides resources for them on the next leg of their journey,” Pannell said. She noted, “We’ve really been focusing on living our parish mission statement, ‘To be a tangible manifestation of Christ living in the community.’ This is just a natural outreach of that.”
Pannell added, “At the March for Life we see a beautiful cross section of the parish coming to help out, and we’re seeing that here, too.” She noted that parishioners have come before work to set up the donated clothing, senior citizens have come in the afternoons to distribute items to the arriving migrants and have played with their children while parents are making arrangements for their next part of their journey, and teens have helped clean out the bathrooms. Some parish volunteers have driven the migrants to Union Station to catch a bus or train. Parishioners donated $4,689 to St. Peter’s Sharing Sunday special collection on July 31 to support the new outreach.
The parish effort had its genesis when Father Brendan Glasgow, the parochial vicar, saw the outreach being provided to the migrants arriving on the buses at Union Station. He spoke to a representative of SAMU First Response, an international humanitarian agency that was playing a leading role in serving the migrants, and learned that one of their biggest needs was having a space to welcome the migrants in a dignified way, where they could be offered food and a place to rest after the long bus rides, and where outreach workers could assist them in joining family members or friends or help them find an initial place to stay and plan for where they will go to seek a place to live and find employment.
“Seeing the need is where it starts,” said Father Glasgow. “There’s a real need for these people to be shown the face of Christ through us… They’re people looking for a better life. Some have traveled a long way... Even though we’re welcoming them, what lies in store for them next is still unknown.”
The young priest thought that St. Peter’s large, air-conditioned parish hall would be a good location for offering that hospitality to the migrants, and partnering with SAMU, the parish welcomed the first bus arriving there by the next week.
“We have a huge amount of parishioners very interested in outreach programs,” Father Carson said of St. Peter’s, where the social justice initiatives include a Haiti Ministry twinning with Notre Dame d’Altagrace Parish and its Catholic school in Cap Haitien, Haiti. The pastor added, “A lot of our parishioners are in jobs of public service, whether working on the Hill (or for government agencies). It lends itself to a natural desire to do outreach.”
St. Peter’s has long been a landmark of faith on Capitol Hill. The parish has been celebrating the bicentennial of its 1820 founding with a variety of events that will include a 200th anniversary closing Mass celebrated by Washington Cardinal Wilton Gregory on Oct. 23.
Father Carson said that when the parish announced its planned migrant outreach, it received some negative comments on social media. The parish continued with the outreach, he said, because “we are Church. It’s not political. It’s to fill a need for our brothers and sisters.”
The bus arrives
On Friday afternoon Aug. 5, a large white GM Coach bus with a red and blue eagle emblem on its side pulled up outside St. Peter’s Church. The bus had traveled about 2,640 miles over two days to Washington, D.C., from Somerton, Arizona, a city on the state’s southwest border with Mexico. The 27 migrants stepping off the bus, mostly families, included a mother holding a little girl’s hand, and a father carrying his young son. A woman outside the bus tearfully greeted her reunited family members, who were embraced by their relatives awaiting their arrival.
Those family reunifications are “beautiful moments,” said Tatiana Laborde, the managing director of SAMU First Response in Washington.
She was joined that afternoon by seven SAMU staff members wearing bright yellow shirts and blue pants who guided the arriving migrants to the St. Peter’s parish hall, and met with them to assist with plans for the next step of their journeys and to help most of them connect with family members or friends on the East Coast.
SAMU First Response is an international humanitarian nonprofit organization with four decades of experience responding to crises around the world. The organization’s website notes, “Given the migration crisis at our nation’s capital, SAMU First Resonse is delivering humanitarian assistance to asylum seekers arriving from Texas and Arizona. We are providing respite care to the children, women and men arriving at Union Station. Our support to these migrants aims to reinstate a sense of security and dignity so they can continue their journey.”
Laborde noted that after Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine, SAMU First Response in recent months has had teams assisting Ukrainian refugees arriving at the borders of Romania, Poland and Moldova. SAMU teams trained medical staffs in El Salvador and Costa Rica for the COVID-19 surges in those countries, and it also provided assistance to the people of Honduras after Hurricane Eta in 2020 and in recent years after Haiti was devastated by an earthquake and the Philippines was struck by a typhoon. In Spain, SAMU First Response is the largest organization working with unaccompanied minors arriving mostly from north Africa.
In April, Catholic Charities of The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington began assisting the migrants arriving on the first buses sent from Texas, and SAMU First Response was among the agencies supporting Catholic Charities’ outreach.
In June, SAMU received a grant from the Emergency Food and Shelter Program of FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency), and since that time, the organization has played a leading role in working with other outreach programs in the metropolitan area to serve the six to 15 busloads of migrants arriving in Washington each week from Texas and Arizona, and has been providing the asylum seekers with up to three nights of shelter in Maryland.
Laborde said many of the migrants arriving on recent buses from those states are originally from Venezuela, Colombia, Cuba and Nicaragua. She said some are fleeing violence, the political situations or the economic crises in their countries and worried about the future of their children. Many are seeking the American dream for their families, she said, adding that while some of the migrants flew by planes to Mexico and then made their way to the U.S. border, others traveled there by land, including Venezuelans whose journeys included walking through jungles and mountainous regions and traveling by canoes over rivers.
Addressing a misunderstanding about the migrants promoted by some media that describe them as “illegal,” Laborde said, “They’re asylum seekers, allowed to be legally in the country.”
The migrants arriving at St. Peter’s parish hall went from table to table picking out clothes for their family members, trying on shoes on their children’s feet, and then relaxing to sit at a table and rest and enjoy one of the meals from World Central Kitchen. One young boy hugged his new stuffed animal tightly.
Jorge Esteves, his wife Catherine Ariza, and their children Emilio, 4, and Tiogo, a year and one-half old, were among the families finding respite at St. Peter’s that afternoon. Emilio had a new Spider-Man backpack his parents found for him there, and he held onto little trucks that he picked up at the toy table. Through a translator, Esteves said his family is Catholic, and they had left Colombia because they couldn’t find economic opportunities there and were concerned about their children’s educational future. The father, who had worked in a bakery and had done construction work in his country, said the family planned to connect with friends in North Carolina, and he hoped to work hard in the United States to provide new opportunities for his children.
Praying together
As the migrants sat at tables in St. Peter’s parish hall, Father Glasgow chatted with some of them in Spanish, including a mother and son from Peru, who said the next leg of their journey would be in Georgia.
Before the guests ate their meals from World Central Kitchen, the young priest led them in prayer, and a boy could be seen folding his hands in prayer, and a mother did likewise, her hands folded in prayer over her face.
Father Glasgow noted that the great majority of the migrants stopping at St. Peter’s are Catholic. “Regardless of their faith background… I can give them a blessing,” he said. Praying with the migrants has been a special experience for him, he added. “When you pray, you’re opening yourself to the spirit of Christ,” he said.
After one group of migrants had arrived at St. Peter’s on a 6 a.m. bus and had breakfast there, Father Glasgow invited them to join him at the 7:30 a.m. Mass he would be celebrating upstairs in the church.
“About one-half of the group went up to Mass… I just said, ‘We can give thanks to God.’ (It was) this beautiful moment, a regular morning Mass with people wearing business suits, and (these) people came as they are.”
Communicating with smiles
Mother Teresa, canonized by the Catholic Church and now known as St. Teresa of Calcutta, liked to stress the importance of kind service to those in need, with the motto “to do small things with great love.” That motto, continued by the faithful work of her Missionaries of Charity sisters serving the poor around the world, could also be seen in the volunteers in St. Peter’s parish hall who sorted out the clothing, welcomed the migrants when they arrived, served them food and helped them get needed items.
Linda Loftus, a member of St. Peter’s who was sorting out and distributing clothes to the migrants that afternoon, said, “I can’t imagine what they’ve been through. I’m happy to do my little part in easing their journey.”
From nearby St. Joseph’s Parish on Capitol Hill, Peter Bell, a retired government worker, had heard about the outreach and had come “just to help out,” he said, adding, “St. Peter’s is doing a good thing.”
Volunteer Kay O’Brien, a St. Peter’s parishioner since 1990, confessed that she doesn’t speak Spanish, but she explained that she’s been able to communicate with the families through smiles and by playing with the children.
“I’ve been here to welcome people and to serve food, sort clothing and (other) donations, and to play with the children. Playing with the children has been my best thing,” she said, adding that the hospitality that volunteers are offering to the arriving migrants has “been the nicest aspect” of the work.
‘A booster to my faith’
Tatiana Laborde of SAMU First Response, who is Catholic and a native of Colombia, praised the partnerships with Catholic Charities and St. Peter’s Parish that her agency has had in serving the migrants.
“We couldn’t do it without the Catholic Church,” she said. “Seeing the important role of the Catholic Church in serving the migrants… has given a booster to my faith and has reminded me of our role as Catholics.”
Reflecting on the outreach to the migrants by the SAMU team and St. Peter’s volunteers in the parish hall, Laborde said, “It’s beautiful to see them rest and smile and catch a breath.”
The SAMU First Response leader said she feels heartbreak over what the migrants have endured, and also admiration for their resilience.
“It also gives you hope,” she said. “They’ve made it to a safe place, and this is the beginning of the next chapter.”
Related story:
Catholic leaders praise outreach to migrants arriving on buses at St. Peter’s Church on Capitol Hill
