How grief made Archbishop García-Siller a prophetic voice on immigration

(RNS) — On May 24, 2022, San Antonio Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller sat with parents in Uvalde, Texas. Their children were dead — 19 of them. Most were Mexican-American, as the city sits 50 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border. People there believed their children would be safe. But a school shooting that day marked another massacre in a strip of land with a long historical legacy of violence against those of Mexican descent.

Thirty-six days later, on June 27, García-Siller stood in San Antonio outside a crime scene where 53 bodies lay in a tractor trailer. In pursuit of the American dream, the migrants had suffocated in metal darkness. In five weeks, he had moved between two forms of American erasure: the sudden obliteration of childhood via school shootings and the slow suffocation of people who migrate. Both communities had been abandoned. Both experiences would stay with him.

These griefs, along with a series of poignant autobiographical details unique for a public declaration from a Catholic bishop, helped to forge García-Siller’s new pastoral letter , “We Will Come to You.” They sit beneath every word.

Born in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, when the Cristero War was very…