The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Migration and Refugee Services (USCCB/MRS) has partnered with The Catholic University of America to develop an educational website that highlights the significant role that the U.S. Catholic bishops and the institutional Church in the United States have played on immigration related issues, especially since the early twentieth century. The website, “U.S. Catholic Bishops and Immigration,” can be found at http://libraries.cua.edu/achrcua/packets.html.
For more than eighty years the Catholic Church in the United States, through the successive variations of what today is the USCCB, has provided a strong, institutional presence in support of immigrants and in favor of more just immigration laws.
“This story has not been widely shared in the past but it is important to do so now,” said Todd Scribner, education outreach coordinator at MRS. “The bishops have long been committed to helping immigrant communities, both through the provision of services and through tireless advocacy on their behalf.”
This website will facilitate access to primary documents that help to highlight these efforts and an expansive narrative that will provide the historical context necessary to understand the importance of these documents. In addition, there will be a number of other educational tools that students, faculty and researchers can use. Diocesan and parish directors of religious education and social concerns may also find this Website to be a useful resource when highlighting immigration and the role of the U.S. Catholic Church in this issue in recent decades.
